Coimbatore is a jewellery city, but it is a gold jewellery city. Search for jewellery here and you get Kalyan, GRT, Kirtilals and the showrooms along Oppanakara Street. All excellent, all selling gold.
Handmade and artificial jewellery is a different market, and it is scattered. Here is where to actually look.
The old lanes
Oppanakara Street and Big Bazaar Street are the traditional retail heart of the city. Between the textile and gold showrooms there are smaller shops selling imitation and fashion jewellery, particularly in the lanes running off the main stretch.
Good for browsing volume and for bargaining. Less good if you want to know who made something, or come back for the same design in six months. Busiest before Diwali and Pongal, when prices also firm up.
R.S. Puram is the calmer alternative: more organised, fixed pricing, higher prices to match. A few boutiques there carry terracotta, jute and quilled jewellery alongside metal pieces. Gandhipuram, around Cross Cut Road, sits between the two for range and pace.
Where makers gather
Coimbatore hosts craft exhibitions through the year, usually in community halls and hotel banquet spaces. These are the best places in the city to buy directly from the person who made the piece, and to find work that never reaches a shopfront.
Dates move, so they are worth watching for in local listings rather than planning around. If you go, ask what the base metal is and how it has been finished. Makers who do their own work will tell you straight away.
Before you order online
A growing number of small studios here sell online rather than through a shop, which is how they keep prices low. The tradeoff is that you cannot handle the piece first, so the photographs have to do that work for you.
- Several photographs from different angles, not one catalogue image
- At least one shot worn on a person, so you can judge scale
- A stated material and finish, not just "fancy jewellery"
- A written return policy
- A real phone number that someone answers
Scale is the one people get wrong most often. A jhumka that looks modest on a white background can arrive considerably larger than expected.
The gap nobody fills
Oxidised silver in particular is underserved in Coimbatore. Plenty of shops carry gold-toned imitation jewellery, but genuine oxidised finishes with properly carved detail are less common, and temple and peacock motifs in oxidised silver less common still.
That dark recessed finish with polished raised edges is what makes carved work legible. It is a deliberate treatment, not tarnish, and it is the reason temple designs have been made in oxidised silver for as long as they have.
That gap is why we started Jaan Creations. We make oxidised silver and antique gold jhumkas here in Coimbatore, priced from Rs 79 to Rs 799, and ship anywhere in Tamil Nadu in 3-4 days.
You can see everything we make in the full catalogue, read more about how we work, or start with how to style oxidised silver jhumkas if you are new to them.