Munnu The Gem Palace

The Gem Palace was founded in 1852 by the Kasliwal family, long-time jewelers to the Mughal emperors of India. In 1727, Maharajah Jai Singh invited the Kasliwals to live and work in his new city, Jaipur. Jaipur was to be one of the first planned cities and a model of excellence with the best thinkers and craftspeople from all of India settled there. The family operated as the Maharajah’s crown jewelers within the palace walls until establishing their own shop in 1852. The Gem Palace is one of the rare organizations that has been vertically integrated for generations, controlling each stage of the production process: the mining of rough, cutting and polishing of stones, design and creation of the piece of jewelry, and then the final retail through one of their own boutiques across India, private appointments on MI Road or their salon in New York City, or at one of the select retail partners across the world. Munnu Gem Palace craftsmen still handcraft the pieces using centuries-old techniques such as the nearly extinct Indian practice of kundun gold inlay work or painstaking hand-enameling. And often the reverse of Munnu Gem Palace jewelry is ornately decorated, as Indian beliefs hold that, just as the eyes can see, the body also is able to see and feel. Therefore, the beauty of the underside that touches the wearer’s skin is just as important as that which faces out to be seen by the world. Today, ninth-generation owner Siddharth Kasliwal runs The Gem Palace in partnership with his family and continues to celebrate and develop the ideas of his late father, Munnu, in his collection Munnu Gem Palace. Inspired by influences as varying as the architecture of buildings and the veins in leaves, or the jewels of Imperial Russia and the vessels of Ancient Greece, Munnu fused his family’s tradition of the highest quality and Indian craft with a new, modern creativity.