Kolhapur: With an aim to uplift the artisans of age-old jewellery technique, the Gems & Jewellery Skill Council of India (GJSCI) brings students of preliminary round of Revive Design contest to the silver town – Hupari. This initiative has been taken as a step to enable the young talent to blend with the custodians of 200 year old technique of silver jewellery making.
GJSCI has been relentlessly contributing towards Hon. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Skill India program and has been taking several measures and steps to nurture the 3.5 million skilled yet uncertified labour forces of the gems and jewellery industry. One of the most preserved tradition of silver jewellery making can be traced to the town of Hupari, near Kolhapur. The entire village is into this business since last 200 years. Hupari artisans are the sole supplier of seamless silver balls, known as Gujrav/Ghungaroos to the entire country.
However, the ages old tradition has been struggling to keep pace with evolving market scenario due to lack of exposure and training. To bridge this gap, GJSCI conducted Design Revive Contest which will bring aspiring designers to showcase their designs to the artisans of Hupari. This will benefit the students too as they will be exposed to the roots of silver jewellery making in India. Design Revive Contest is an inter institute level national contest where talents from across the country have participated and the handpicked 20 who made it to the preliminary round will be visiting Hupari and their designs will be published in a booklet that will be disseminated amongst the artisans. The final round of Design Revive contest will be held in Mumbai. Further, the winning designs will be marketed by the UN.
“Since inception, GJSCI has worked towards the betterment of uncertified artisans in the gems and jewellery industry. With every initiative we aim to educate and train the core of this industry in accord to global standards. With the same objective, GJSCI formulated Design revive contest integrating Hupari, that will enable the artisans to learn about new designs and trends at the same time give students an opportunity to interact with artisans”, said Mr. Prem Kothari, Chairman, and GJSCI.
The occupants of this talent are facing a creative draught due to lack of exposure in terms of latest trends & designs. As a result, their livelihood gets affected. With an attempt to curb this and enable the artisans of our homeland to adapt the latest trends of the industry, we have taken this initiative to take the upcoming raw talents to fuse with the custodians of traditional skills. We are overwhelmed to see the response from students. There is tremendous excitement amongst them and we are looking forward to make this activity a great success– said Mr Binit Bhatt, CEO GJSCI.
