Kundan, Polki, Jadau, Thappa and Meenakari: A Guide to Traditional Indian Jewellery Techniques
People throw around Kundan, Polki, Jadau, Thappa and Meenakari as though they all mean roughly the same thing. They don't. Two are stones. One is a setting method. One is a lighter build of that same method. One is enamel work that has nothing to do with stone-setting at all. Sort those apart and the rest of Indian bridal jewellery starts making a lot more sense.
Jadau
Start here, because almost everything else sits on top of it. A goldsmith carves the base of a piece by hand, presses in a natural resin called lac while it's still soft, and sets each stone straight into that resin — no solder, no prongs, no claws. Fine gold foil is then pressed and burnished around every stone, partly to hold it firmly and partly to hide the join. It's slow work; a single necklace can take a team of artisans several weeks. For the fuller version of this process, we've covered it separately in The Timeless Art of Jadau Jewellery.
Polki
Swap the glass for an actual uncut diamond and you have Polki. Nothing about the stone is touched after it leaves the ground — no faceting, no polish — so the sparkle is quieter, and every stone ends up looking subtly different from the next. That rarity is also why Polki costs more than Kundan and tends to hold its value better over time. Not every Polki stone is the same grade, either; we go into that properly in What Is Polki Jewellery? A Complete FAQ Guide.
Moissanite Polki
Not every "Polki" piece uses a diamond, and that's not a compromise — for a lot of buyers, it's the whole point. Moissanite Polki uses moissanite, a completely different mineral to diamond, cut and shaped to recreate Polki's raw, uncut look and set into gold using the same Jadau technique described above. It isn't a diamond at all; it's a lab-created stone, which keeps the cost well below any grade of natural Polki while still giving a genuinely bright sparkle — often with more colourful "fire" than a diamond shows.
It's become one of the most popular ways to buy Polki-style jewellery today, and for a straightforward reason: it delivers the full traditional look and hand-set craftsmanship without the price of a natural stone, or the sourcing questions that can come with one. A large part of our own Polki and bridal collection is set in moissanite for exactly this reason.
Kundan
Kundan tells you what's been set into the gold, not how. Traditionally it's polished glass or a semi-precious stone, framed tightly in gold foil using the Jadau method above. It throws a sharper, more uniform sparkle than Polki, and it's usually the more affordable of the two, since there's no real diamond involved.
Thappa
Thappa takes its name from the word for "stamp" or "die," and it starts as a different craft altogether — closer to metalworking than stone-setting. It begins with a steel die, hand-carved by a specialist engraver. Gold, beaten down to almost paper thinness, gets laid onto that die and worked with a hammer, blow after blow, until the metal has taken on every line of the pattern carved underneath it. What comes off the die is a hollow, high-relief gold shell — grand in scale, but a fraction of the weight of a solid casting.
To make that shell sturdy enough to wear, the back is packed with lac, giving it a firm internal structure without adding real weight. Only then does the Jadau side of the process begin: uncut Polki diamonds are pressed into the warmed lac and locked in place with fine gold foil, exactly as in solid Jadau work. The result, often called "Thappa Jadau," carries the same bold, dimensional look as heavy hand-beaten gold, at a fraction of the weight — and because it uses far less gold overall, typically at a lower price too.
That price difference is worth knowing as a buyer. Because a Thappa piece is still entirely handmade and set with genuine uncut diamonds, it's sometimes priced close to solid Jadau work — when the far lower gold content really ought to mean a lower price. Understanding the difference is the simplest way to know what you're actually paying for.
Meenakari
Meenakari is the odd one out on this list, because it isn't a way of setting stones at all. It's enamel. Artisans fuse colour directly onto the metal, usually on the back of a piece, so a necklace that looks entirely gold-and-stone from the front can hide a completely different, often much brighter design underneath. It's a detail that only rewards someone who actually turns the piece over.
Put together
Jadau is the setting method. Kundan, Polki and Moissanite Polki are what gets set into it. Thappa is a different way of building the gold structure underneath. Meenakari is the colour hiding on the back. Most serious heirloom pieces combine several of these at once — a Polki necklace, set in Jadau, with Meenakari worked into the reverse, is a completely ordinary combination rather than an unusual one.
If you're planning a piece around a specific stone grade, gemstone combination or budget, our Custom Design Service is where that conversation starts.