Amrapali Museum and the soul of Indian jewellery

How one of Jaipur’s landmark institutions is expanding the idea of ornament as memory 

Amrapali was no longer a lamp illuminating the confines of any one room but the pervasive sun whose rays touched every life

– from The Legend of Amrapali by Anurag Anand

 

The month of January in Jaipur is the most vibrant time of the year in India’s new cultural capital — the Pink City. Art, culture, literature and sports come alive across the city, as Jaipur truly comes into its own. Add to this the magical January weather, and the city transforms into a soulful celebration year after year.

Every January, my friend Rajiv Arora brings together a remarkable gathering — a true who’s who from across the country — inviting them to witness an exceptional collection and experience Jaipur at its finest. The Amrapali Museum in Jaipur aspires to be just that — a pervasive presence in India’s cultural space that touches lives far beyond its 10,000 square feet address in Jaipur.

L-R; Rajiv Arora, Tripti Pandey, Apra Kuchhal, Ila Arun and Sundeep Bhutoria

After all, India’s jewellery is not an accessory. It is archive, inheritance, invocation.

Across centuries, ornaments in this land have carried far more than precious metal or gemstones. They have held prayer and power, belonging and belief. They have marked life stages, social worlds, regional identities, and spiritual thresholds. To speak of Indian jewellery, therefore, is to speak of India itself — layered, intimate, symbolic, and alive.

It is this deeper understanding that finds one of its most compelling contemporary expressions in the Amrapali Museum in Jaipur. With its recently unveiled expansion — now spread across three floors and over 10,000 square feet — the museum does something rare and vital. It reminds us that heritage is not meant to be frozen in vitrines, admired from a distance, but experienced, felt, and emotionally engaged with.

A barefoot moment that changed everything

Every institution rooted in authenticity has an origin story that feels almost mythic in retrospect. The Amrapali Museum’s beginnings lie not in grand ambition, but in a moment of human encounter.

On a scorching May afternoon in 1980, an elderly couple walked barefoot into a modest office in Jaipur, carrying a heavy cloth potli. When it was untied, silver ornaments spilled across a table — hair adornments, amulets, earrings, anklets — interspersed with flashes of gold and gemstones. Each piece bore the weight of extraordinary craftsmanship and lived memory.

That moment transformed Rajiv Arora and Rajesh Ajmera, the co-founders of the Amrapali Museum. What began as instinctive fascination soon evolved into a life’s calling. They travelled across India, into remote villages, artisan homes, pawn shops, and collectors’ archives, rescuing ornaments from the melting pot and, in the process, rescuing stories from oblivion.

This was never about acquisition alone. It was about preservation with purpose. Over decades, that commitment laid the foundation for what would become the Amrapali Museum — named after the legendary Amrapali, the courtesan of Vaishali in ancient India, revered not just for beauty, but for intellect and spiritual awakening.

Today, the museum houses over 4,500 rare objects, with approximately 1,500 on display. Tribal, ceremonial, temple, and everyday jewellery from across the Indian subcontinent sit together in quiet dialogue — crafted in silver, gold, and enamel; worn from head to toe; shaped by region, ritual, and reason.

Jewellery as language, not luxury

To understand Indian jewellery is to recognise that it has always functioned as language.

A nose ring signalled marital status and regional identity. Anklets marked rhythm and femininity. Amulets carried protection, invoking divine guardianship against illness or misfortune. Temple jewellery was devotion cast in metal; tribal ornaments were maps of community and cosmology.

In many parts of India, jewellery has historically been a woman’s movable wealth, her insurance, her dignity. It has been passed down not merely as inheritance, but as memory — each piece carrying the imprint of a grandmother’s hands, a mother’s milestones, a daughter’s becoming.

What the Amrapali Museum does with rare sensitivity is restore this context. The ornaments are not displayed as isolated objects of beauty. They are presented as social artefacts, anchored in geography, belief systems, and lived experience. One begins to see patterns: how climate influenced material choices, how trade routes shaped design vocabularies, how faith found expression through form.

This is where the museum transcends being a repository and becomes a cultural text, one that scholars, designers, students, travellers, and connoisseurs can read in layers.

When heritage meets immersive storytelling

The newly unveiled expansion marks a significant shift in how Indian museums can imagine the future.

Spread across an additional floor, the Amrapali Museum now integrates projection mapping, immersive video narratives, special effects, and interactive digital applications. But crucially, these technologies are not performative distractions. They are restrained, thoughtful, and deeply respectful of craft.

Visitors are no longer passive observers. They step into layered narratives. They watch techniques unfold. They encounter the human hands and histories behind each ornament. The experience moves from visual admiration to emotional connection.

As Rajiv Arora articulates: “Jewellery has always carried stories of people, places, and moments in time. With this expansion, our aim was to give those stories a larger voice. By combining traditional displays with immersive storytelling, we want visitors to connect emotionally with India’s heritage, not just admire it visually.”

That distinction — between admiration and connection — is where the future of heritage truly lies. Rajesh Ajmera adds another essential dimension: “India’s jewellery traditions are vast and deeply human. Every ornament carries meaning of faith, celebration, protection, or belonging. The immersive floor allows us to convey this richness in a way today’s audiences can truly experience and feel.”

In an age of shrinking attention spans and algorithm-driven consumption, this approach recognises a simple truth: stories, when well told, still hold us.

 

 

Why India needs spaces like this

India stands at a paradoxical moment. We are producing more wealth, more design, more global cultural capital than ever before — yet we are also at risk of flattening our own inheritance into trend and commodity.

Jewellery today is often discussed in the language of fashion cycles, red carpets, and investment value. All legitimate, but incomplete. Without institutions like the Amrapali Museum, we risk forgetting the deeper grammar of adornment — the why before the what.

This museum does not romanticise the past. Instead, it offers continuity. It shows how traditional forms inspire contemporary design, how heritage can remain relevant without becoming diluted, and how artisans of the past continue to shape aesthetic conversations today.

Importantly, the museum positions itself as a living resource. Each visit promises new discoveries, through historical context, material innovation, or human narrative. It bridges generations: honouring artisans whose names history forgot, while shaping how future designers think about authenticity and cultural depth.

An invitation, not a monument

Perhaps the most powerful thing about the Amrapali Museum is that it does not behave like a monument. It behaves like an invitation.

An invitation to move beyond glass cases and timelines. To listen to jewellery whisper tales of devotion, power, celebration, and beauty. To understand that heritage is not something we visit once and tick off, but something we return to, again and again, with new questions.

Rooted in Jaipur’s artistic legacy yet global in outlook, the museum stands as a quiet but confident statement: that India’s craftsmanship does not need translation; it needs attention and care.

 

In reimagining how jewellery heritage can be experienced, the Amrapali Museum does more than expand its physical footprint. It expands our cultural imagination. It reminds us that some of the most precious things we inherit are not objects, but the stories that teach us who we are.

 

 I was truly impressed by the newly created floor, which evokes the sensibility of leading international museums. The immersive LCD installations across the walls, the thoughtfully placed benches narrating the journey of jewels and history, and the evocative lighting on the Goddess together create a powerful, contemporary museum experience.

Thank you, Rajiv, for bringing such a refined global perspective to the Pink City — Jaipur is richer for it.

 

This article was published in The Daily Guardian