the family gold

[hippi_pixi]

i mentioned on the gold thread in the jewellery section that i recently had the opportunity to have sticky beak through the future in laws jewellery collection and since they kept saying that as part of the family it will also be mine i thought I'd take a few pictures. i didn't ask for stats as i felt rude enough documenting everything in photographs, I didnt want to look like i was also tallying up the value.

This is just the stuff that out of the safety deposit box for the weekend.

first up this was made for the birth of an uncle 50 years ago and contains real claws of a tiger. my partner tells me that this type of necklace is made at birth for the future strength, courage and virility of the boy. despite my strong beliefs against animal cruelty i didn't say anything about this as its 50 years old. I'm sure the tiger doesn't miss them anymore and surely they don't do this anymore. right? right? wrong! i went to a different uncle 25th wedding anniversary on the weekend and saw a baby with an almost identical necklace with his name on it. i was shocked.




a gold and ruby set. sorry i've done everything i can to get the pics upright but they just refuse



my aunties bridal set, white gold diamonds and pearls

 

[hippi_pixi]

up next a set of my FMIL's. my partner actually wore this to our engagment party. didn't look out of place at all surprisingly



a gold set belonging to my future aunty. gorgeous high karat gold. she said she didn't like it and was thinking of sending it to india to be melted down and made into something else. again, i was horrified. i thought it was absolutely stunning and looked brand new. its apparantly 15 years old so i would assume it hasn't been worn much. i'm hoping to wear this during my wedding celebrations at some point



another high karat gold set. quite long 4 chains with 4 stones, very difficult to get a good photo of. the first three stones are so completey windowed they just look purple! they are actually all different colors.



close up of the bottom stone that was the prettiest

 

[hippi_pixi]

this also belongs to my FMIL. lots of different stones. i actually sits much lower but its a piece my FMIL doesn't like cos its much longer IRL and the stones dont tend to stay the right way up. i was modelling how it would sit if the chain was shorter. lovely stones and high karat gold



This is my partners brooch (a man brooch!) Lillu is his nickname and name he goes by 99% of the time. his real name is only used on his passport, drivers licence and our formal wedding invitations.



a small peak at a collection of gold bangles

 

[hippi_pixi]

and the rest is mine!

first up a set my future uncle bought me while away in singapore. gold and enamel peacocks. really beautiful in real life as they are light and delicate





an armband my future grandma gave me at our engagement. gold diamonds and rubies



grandma also gave me this more recently. one of my favourite pieces because the gold work is so beautiful. very rich and earthy.

 

[hippi_pixi]

up next - white gold!

first is my headpiece or tikka for my wedding day. i also wore this at my engagement party. the blue stone is screwed in and can be detached and swapped for a red one i have. a lot of the jewellery has this feature. i'm not sure if its an indian thing or just something the family jeweller does but its fantastic.





and my bridal belt. generally the bridal jewellery is intended to set the married couple up for life financially and my FMIL originally wanted everything i had made in yellow gold. but i wanted white gold because I absolutely hate two tone metal and don't like yellow gold pieces with diamond mele set in white gold. its just not attractive to me at all. anyway she kept saying that it the pieces were in yellow gold, later in life i gold melt them down and reuse the gold. so we compromised and had the back of the belt made in yellow gold and the front in white gold this belt is the single most expensive cost of the entire wedding!

 

[hippi_pixi]

my white gold and diamond bangles. rumoured to have cost 25K. such a shame they will relatively hide within a huge stack of bangles on my wedding day...





This is my new gold chain. stunning in person as it sparkles like crazy. As far as i know this is the most important symbol of marriage for indian women. the equivalent of a wedding band. it believe it will have 2 gold disc pendants on it once we are married and my FMIL and auntys wear theirs tucked away underneath their clothes. FMIL usually has a few safety pins attached also



my gold bangles

 

[hippi_pixi]

My favourite piece. this will hold the red powder they put on peoples foreheads

 

[rosetta]

Awesome thanks for sharing! I have a similar collection myself, but more white gold and platinum pieces (there's an old thread on them somewhere) I have a very similar pair of bangles as you!

My mothers' collection is more yellow gold like yours, but I've never even seen it all in one place, it's huge. I have more appreciation for yellow high karat gold now, I used to hate it when I was younger.

 

[AGBF]

i mentioned on the gold thread in the jewellery section that i recently had the opportunity to have sticky beak through the future in laws jewellery collection and since they kept saying that as part of the family it will also be mine i thought I'd take a few pictures.

This is a truly awesome collection, hippi_pixi, but I have been following your wedding plans and it doesn't surprise me. I have become accustomed to being dazzled by the high karat gold jewelry your fiancé's family owns and is lavishing upon you! I am really looking forward to seeing you dressed for your wedding!

Hugs,
Deb

 

[hippi_pixi]

Thanks Rosetta and AGBF

Rosetta don't worry i have seen your collection i think its the only other indian collection i have seen on PS. I think this is just a portion of the family jewellery. it was a big fat handbag full that they had gotten out of their security deposit box recently and its all now in india ready for our wedding in 5 weeks. I too had an aversion to yellow gold until recently. i disliked the low carat, two tone stuff i see commonly in australia but once i started seeing the high karat gold stuff i almost wish i could trade all the white gold stuff i have chosen for high karat gold instead!

AGBF thanks for your compliments as soon as they starting showing me the collection my first thought was that i have enjoyed so much bling **** on PS i owe it to them to contribute I think the stash of gold and jewellery is more standard in indian families than with white families. I'm also very lucky to be the only girl in mine and my partners generation so they're really excited to share it all with me.

 

[Lady_Disdain]

This isn't just ****, it is hardcore, XXX stuff.

 

[tyty333]

Such cool stuff. I love seeing jewelry from other cultures. Its really amazing!

 

[Rosebloom]

I keep trying to post something but really there are no words.

Wow!!!

 

[GemFever]

Incredible pieces, thanks for sharing! I also loved learning something new about Indian culture, like about the gold chain being as important as the wedding band. How cool!

 

[yennyfire]

Wow, I can't imagine owning one of those pieces, much less all of them!! That belt is truly stunning and the little "pot" for the powder is TDF!! What a gem! How lucky you are to own such magnificent pieces!

 

[distracts]

This is so impressive! LOVE the bridal belt and all of the beautiful yellow gold!

 

[rosetta]

Thanks Rosetta and AGBF

Rosetta don't worry i have seen your collection i think its the only other indian collection i have seen on PS. I think this is just a portion of the family jewellery. it was a big fat handbag full that they had gotten out of their security deposit box recently and its all now in india ready for our wedding in 5 weeks. I too had an aversion to yellow gold until recently. i disliked the low carat, two tone stuff i see commonly in australia but once i started seeing the high karat gold stuff i almost wish i could trade all the white gold stuff i have chosen for high karat gold instead!

AGBF thanks for your compliments as soon as they starting showing me the collection my first thought was that i have enjoyed so much bling **** on PS i owe it to them to contribute I think the stash of gold and jewellery is more standard in indian families than with white families. I'm also very lucky to be the only girl in mine and my partners generation so they're really excited to share it all with me.

I'm not indian but close enough! I didn't feel comfortable putting my whole collection on PS, so I just posted my wedding gifts (I kinda got bored of uploading photos by then..) we have many many girls in my family (I have 7 aunts on my mum's side) so it's great fun to share their jewellery. They used to buy something every week when the gold price was lower! They love to invest in gold and land primarily.

My family keep thier jewels at their homes. I think that's a crazy security risk even though they have safes you can walk into. I couldn't convince them to use a security deposit box like me and your family does.

Are you planning on putting all of these jewels in a home safe or a bank?

 

[Tuckins1]

Woweewow! So many pretties!!

 

[blingymo]

i mentioned on the gold thread in the jewellery section that i recently had the opportunity to have sticky beak through the future in laws jewellery collection and since they kept saying that as part of the family it will also be mine i thought I'd take a few pictures. Yay! I just asked for more bling pics in the other thread before I saw this!

Sticky beak?

my aunties bridal set, white gold diamonds and pearls LOVE!

Haha. Now to submit and see if I did the quoting correctly!

 

[blingymo]

As my (insert thick southern drawl) SIL would say, OH MY WORD! I am totally stunned, amazed, dazzled, jealous and in love with all your stash! I would love to come serve at the wedding to get a look at all the jewels that are going to show up on you, the family, and the guests! Have SO much fun!!! I'm not sure I can wait 5+ weeks to see all the pics.

 

[Dreamer_D]

Beautiful! It is hard to imagine so many amazing pieces all in one place at the wedding!

... They used to buy something every week when the gold price was lower! They love to invest in gold and land primarily. ...

Rosetta, I have heard many times that in Indian culture and others gold is considered a good place to store one's wealth. But can you tell me more about that practice? It seems to me that private sellers rarely get the investment back if they sell theor own privately owned gold. At least that has been my experience pawning gold. So how is it considered a good investment? Or is the wealth never sold? Or is the market utterly different for very high carat gold? I am very curious how this practice is perceived by the people who practice it!

 

[Laila619]

Amazing pieces!!!

 

[rosetta]

Beautiful! It is hard to imagine so many amazing pieces all in one place at the wedding!

... They used to buy something every week when the gold price was lower! They love to invest in gold and land primarily. ...

Rosetta, I have heard many times that in Indian culture and others gold is considered a good place to store one's wealth. But can you tell me more about that practice? It seems to me that private sellers rarely get the investment back if they sell theor own privately owned gold. At least that has been my experience pawning gold. So how is it considered a good investment? Or is the wealth never sold? Or is the market utterly different for very high carat gold? I am very curious how this practice is perceived by the people who practice it!

Traditionally, the labour charges to fashion gold are quite low, plus most of it is high karat. So say you're bored of a piece. You take it to a jeweller, they offer you a price pretty close to the going rate for the gold alone, and you put in a bit more money and go home with a new piece! I myself have swapped loads of pieces of jewellery this way. Nearly all jewellers will buy your gold in the subcontinent. My mother bought gold BY THE KILO when the price was historically low, now it is worth much more. She used some of it to make my wedding jewellery: it would have cost a lot more obviously if she had to buy the gold now. Of course, most jewellers back home poo poo at anything under 22k so you wouldn't get a great price for that. This applies to high karat gold really.

I know if I try to pawn my gold in the UK, I would get a very poor price indeed.

I will also add that jewellery was for long the only way a woman could store her own personal wealth. They really didn't have access to many other assets. For example, real estate would pass from father to son, no matter how many daughters there were. So the accumulation of jewellery, specifically in the form of the most expensive precious metal available at the time, took on even greater importance. If you were wealthier, then coloured stones such as rubies and emeralds were also prized, as were large natural pearls. Some members of extended family have large amounts of these stones, but they are now so valuable that they aren't even set into jewellery but kept as investments. Other members (such as my parents) chose to use their inheritance to buy land instead, and so we sadly don't have the really expensive stones anymore (shame!). But in monetary terms, the real estate was a better investment: my eldest aunt recently sold a prime piece of commercial property for £3 million which was bought for less than £100,000 about 20 years ago Now that's what I call a pretty good investment! My parents are now using their gains to build several apartment blocks, and they are even constructing a hotel, of which I am a partial owner (um, I know nothing about the hotel business )

So I would say yes, the high karat gold was a good investment now that gold prices have gone up, and it has good resale value IF you want to keep recycling your pieces. Only the natural, unheated coloured stones and natural pearls have really skyrocketed in price. Overall though, I'd say real estate has proven to be the bigger earner: so no different than in many places in the UK and US!

Sorry for the threadjack folks!

 

[AGBF]

I'm not indian but close enough!

I thought you were and I am not sure why. I did recently read that said you were from South Asia. I don't want to get more personal than you wish to on Pricescope, but is your family originally from Pakistan or Bangladesh? My daughter had a very close friend from age 3 whose parents were from extremely prominent Pakistani families. The child's mother had been born to a father in the Foreign Service. So she was born in England, then spent her first six years in Sweden. She went to high school in a French speaking school in North Africa. She became a solicitor in England while her husband was at Cambridge, then they moved here and are now US citizens!
The third member of our group was the daughter of an Italian neuro-biologist and her Indian physicist husband. She already spoke about eight languages (one more than my husband because she had also studied Russian, which he had not) and she was learning Hindi. Unlike the mothers of some young children, I had a pretty stimulating social life in those days!

Deb

 

[two_little_birds]

OMG, the bridal belt nearly made me faint. LOL I guess if you were chubby you'd get a bigger one?

Seriously though, what an amazing collection!

BTW you guys are such a cute looking couple.

 

[madelise]

This isn't just ****, it is hardcore, XXX stuff.

I have more appreciation for yellow high karat gold now, I used to hate it when I was younger.

Ditto the above!!

Oh I'm loving this!! Thank you so much for sharing, Hippi.


My family is Chinese and SO's family is Pakistani, so we also have a love for high karat yellow gold. I started a Show Me Your Ethnic High Karat Yellow Gold Pieces thread a while ago, and shared some of my family's. I really love the idea of a screw in stone so you can change your looks! It's stunning. I really do hope none of these pieces get melted down. I think that aunt's set is just absolutely stunning, and knowing it might get melted down makes me so sad!

 

[SB621]

Lovely pieces!!!!!!

 

[diamondseeker2006]

These are absolutely beautiful!!! Thank you so much for sharing them!

I do have a question, though. You said the marriage belt was to set the couple up financially. Does that mean that couples sell this after the wedding to buy a house or whatever?