Temple Jewellery Coin Bangles
Temple jewellery which classical and traditional look is commonly associated with dancers practicing the dance form of Bharatanatyam or Kuchipudi. Temple jewellery is characterised by some of the finest handwork, painfully crafted by skilled craftsmen and jewellers. Due to the finesse required in crafting it, the time required to deliver the jewellery may sometimes even go up to a year, depending on the number of pieces required. But one sight at the final product and most of customers will forget the agony of their wait. From earrings to necklaces to pieces for adorning the hair, feet, hip and even the plaint.
Thousands of pearls are embedded in the costliest jewelries of the Sivalinga. During the rein of Chola dynasty, the South Indian temples have contributed a lot in the growth of the art of jewel making. The temples in South India even maintained their own workshops, employed very much skilled goldsmiths and jewellers to fashion jewels, to test the jewels and evaluate them whenever it is required.
The master craftsmen were also been appointed and granted many royal titles on them for their mastery and excellence in the art. Till today much costly jewelries are still well preserved in the Madurai temple. The most significant jewels among them are the crowns made of gold and encrusted with the nine gems or navaratna. A very important jewelry of most of the temples is the ‘Ratnachurmmandu’, a golden jeweled turban. It is mostly worn on one of the festivals of Lord Sundaresvara, who is supposed to have worked as a casual labourer and carried the mud on his head on behalf of an old lady. During the rule of Vijayanagar kings, the heights of pomp and lavishness in offerings reached to the peak particularly at the time of Krishnadeva Raya.