Why Handcrafted Jewellery Costs More — Understanding Making Charges
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When you hold a handcrafted piece next to a machine-made one that looks almost identical and costs a third of the price, it is a fair question: what exactly are you paying for? The answer is not brand premium or margin. It is time, human skill, and a fundamentally different way of making things — one where the cost of labour is the dominant variable, not the cost of the machine.
This is an honest breakdown of what goes into the price of handcrafted jewellery, specifically the Jadau Kundan and sterling silver pieces made by Rajasthani artisans.
What Are Making Charges?
Making charges — also called kaarigarī — are the labour cost component of a jewellery piece's price, separate from the cost of the metal and stones. When you buy jewellery, you are paying for two things: the raw materials, and the work done to transform those materials into the finished piece. In machine-made jewellery, the "work" is done largely by automated equipment and the making charge is low. In handcrafted jewellery, the work is done by human hands across many hours and multiple specialists, and the making charge reflects that entirely.
For mass-produced jewellery, making charges might represent 5–15% of the final price. For quality handcrafted pieces — particularly Jadau Kundan — they routinely represent 40–60% or more of the final price. The metal and stones are almost secondary to the cost of the craft.
Why Handcrafted Jewellery Takes So Much Longer
A machine can stamp out a hundred identical pendants in an hour. A Rajasthani artisan working on a Jadau Kundan piece may spend an entire day setting a single section of stones. This is not inefficiency — it is the nature of the craft.
A genuine Jadau Kundan piece passes through the hands of multiple specialists, each responsible for a distinct stage that requires years of training:
- The goldsmith (Sonar) — builds the gold framework by hand, shaping 22-karat gold strips into the structural base of the piece
- The engraver (Khudai kaarigar) — engraves the detailed patterns that will hold the enamel on the reverse side
- The enamel artist (Meenakaar) — fills the engraved channels with coloured enamel and fires the piece in a kiln, sometimes repeatedly to achieve depth of colour
- The stone setter (Jadai kaarigar) — sets each stone individually using 24-karat gold foil hammered around it by hand, one stone at a time
- The polisher (Ghisaai kaarigar) — finishes and polishes the completed piece
These are not stages on an assembly line. Each specialist is a craftsperson who has typically trained for years under a master. A complex necklace passes through all five pairs of hands and may take two to three weeks from start to finish.
You are not paying for one person's time. You are paying for five specialists, years of accumulated skill, and weeks of focused work — compressed into a single piece.
The Materials Cost More Too — and Here Is Why
Handcrafted jewellery also uses materials differently than machine manufacturing. A stamping machine is precise and generates minimal waste. Hand fabrication involves cutting, shaping, and adjusting by eye and by feel — metal is trimmed, stones are tested for fit, and some proportion of material is inevitably lost in the process. That waste is built into the cost.
The quality of materials also tends to be higher in genuinely handcrafted pieces, for a practical reason: high-quality materials are easier to work with by hand. Inferior alloys crack, bubble, or refuse to take enamel properly. A craftsperson working with poor materials produces poor results, regardless of skill. The material and the craft are inseparable.
What You Are Not Paying For in Machine-Made Jewellery
Understanding the cost difference also means understanding what is absent from cheaper jewellery. A machine-made piece stamped from a mould has:
- No individual variation — every piece is identical to the last
- No human judgement in stone placement — stones are pressed into pre-formed cavities, not set by hand around each individual gem
- No reverse work — the back of a machine-made piece is unfinished or plain; a Jadau piece carries meenakari enamel on the reverse that is often as intricate as the front
- No accumulated craft tradition — it cannot carry the knowledge of a lineage of makers, because there is no lineage involved
These absences are not flaws — machine-made jewellery serves a purpose and a price point. But they are what you are giving up when you choose the lower price, and they are worth naming clearly.
Why Rajasthan, and Why It Matters for Price
Jaipur is the centre of Jadau Kundan jewellery for a reason that is directly relevant to cost. The city has maintained an unbroken lineage of craft specialisation — goldsmiths, stone cutters, enamel artists, polishers — for centuries. The knowledge is passed from master to apprentice within families and workshops, not taught in institutions or codified in manuals. It exists in hands, in muscle memory, in the accumulated experience of watching thousands of pieces made and making thousands yourself.
This concentration of skill is irreplaceable, and it is becoming rarer. Each generation of artisans is smaller than the last as younger people leave craft for other livelihoods. The craftspeople who remain are increasingly rare, and their time is finite. That scarcity is real, and it is legitimately part of what you pay for in a handcrafted Rajasthani piece.
At Rangtarini, every piece is made by artisans working in this tradition. When you buy from us, a meaningful portion of that price goes directly to the craftsperson who made it. Explore the collection →
How to Read Making Charges When You Shop
If you are buying jewellery and a jeweller breaks down the price — metal value, stone value, and making charges — the making charge percentage tells you something real about how the piece was made. A making charge under 10% on a piece described as handcrafted is a flag worth investigating. Genuine handcraft costs more to produce than that figure implies.
For Rangtarini pieces, making charges are included in the listed price. We do not itemise them separately, but they reflect the actual labour cost of Rajasthani artisan work — and they are the largest component of what you pay for a Jadau Kundan piece.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are making charges negotiable when buying jewellery?
At large jewellery retailers, making charges are sometimes negotiated — particularly on high-value purchases. However, for small independent brands and artisan jewellers, making charges reflect actual labour cost and leave limited room for negotiation. Asking for a discount on a handcrafted piece from a small maker is effectively asking the craftsperson to work for less.
Why do making charges vary so much between jewellers?
Because they reflect fundamentally different methods of production. A piece made by machine has very low labour cost. A piece made entirely by hand by trained specialists has very high labour cost. Two pieces that look similar can have wildly different making charges because one was stamped from a mould in minutes and the other was built by hand over days.
Does handcrafted jewellery hold its value better?
The intrinsic metal value of any piece depends on its material content — sterling silver or gold — not on how it was made. What handcrafted jewellery holds is craft value and rarity. A genuine Jadau Kundan piece made by a specific artisan in a tradition that is becoming scarcer has a cultural and aesthetic value that mass production cannot replicate — and that value tends not to diminish the way trend-driven pieces do.
How can I tell if a piece is genuinely handcrafted?
Look for variation. Genuine handcrafted pieces have subtle irregularities — stone placements that are close but not mechanically identical, enamel work that varies slightly in colour depth, surface textures that are not perfectly uniform. These are not flaws; they are evidence of human hands. Machine-made pieces are perfectly consistent in a way that handcrafted pieces simply are not.
The Short Answer
Handcrafted jewellery costs more because human skill, time, and specialised knowledge cost more than machine time. Making charges are not margin padding — they are the price of craft. When you pay them, you are compensating real people for rare skills that take years to develop and a lifetime to master.
That is what a handcrafted piece carries that a machine-made one does not. Not just the look — the making. See Rangtarini's handcrafted Jadau Kundan collection →