Nenikaar casts vintage chikankari lace into solid metal jewellery

A self-taught designer wanted to preserve the softness and jaali texture of antique lace in something solid enough to wear.

Coat vintage chikankari lace in wax exactly as it is, then lost-wax cast it: the textile burns away and every stitch remains in metal.

Lace from antique markets is wax-coated by hand — no CAD — then cast by Jaipur karigars in kilns; wax and fabric burn off, and molten metal fills the stitch-by-stitch cavity.

No sales figures published; the technique defines the label's 'Tantuja' line — Sanskrit for 'born of thread' — and its three-part name: mother Neeta, Niyati, and the Jaipur karigars.

In the spring of 2020 lockdown, Mumbai's Niyati Chheda and her mother Neeta sat down with a box of beads; the pastime became a small-batch fundraiser for Covid-19 relief, then an obsession with metalsmithing. By May 2021 the largely self-taught designer had launched Nenikaar on Instagram — the name fusing Ne (Neeta, the creative heart), Ni (Niyati) and kaar (karigars, the artisans).

Her breakthrough came from Lucknowi chikankari lace. Rather than model it, she uses the lace itself: vintage pieces sourced from antique markets and online sellers are coated in wax so every textural detail of the stitches is captured, bypassing digital CAD renders entirely. Her team of karigars in Jaipur then runs the lost-wax casting — pressure, steam and kiln heat burn away wax and fabric, leaving a cavity that is filled with molten metal.

The result, in the 'Tantuja' collection — Sanskrit for 'born of thread' — is jewellery that begins as fabric and ends as solid metal, keeping the fragility, porosity and negative space of the original jaali work in a wearable form.

Digital rendering would flatten the hand of the embroidery, so the process skips CAD altogether.

Using the textile as its own wax model preserves textures a sculptor could not reproduce.

Vintage lace is fragile and finite — casting turns deteriorating cloth into permanent metal.

The name builds the karigars into the brand, matching a process that depends on their casting skill.

Casting a material inside the mold — not a model of it — copies what photographs of it never could: the actual texture.

Nenikaar sells through Instagram from Mumbai, with earlier collections drawing on the jaali latticework of Jaipur's architecture before 'Tantuja' took the lace-to-metal method as its core. Pieces shown in The Nod Mag include the 'Aam Panna' earrings and the 'Chakra' ring.