Kundan vs Polki vs Jadau
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If you've spent any time around Indian bridal jewelry in a showroom, at a family wedding, or scrolling jewelry pages online you've heard these three words tossed around as if they mean the same thing: Kundan, Polki, Jadau.
They don't.
And here's the thing that trips up most beginners (and honestly, a good number of working jewellers too): these three words aren't even three versions of the same kind of thing.
"One is a stone. One is a technique. One is an entire craft process that the other two live inside of"
At JK, this is one of the first things we untangle for every student who walks into our gemology and jewelry design classes because if you get this hierarchy wrong, everything you learn afterwards about traditional Indian jewelry sits on shaky ground.
The Terminology Hierarchy Get This Right and Everything Else Falls Into Place
Polki tells you what the stone is.
kundan tells you how a stone is set.
Jadau tells you about the entire making process the piece went through.
This is why you'll often hear the phrase "Polki Jadau" jewellery — it means uncut diamonds (Polki), set using the Jadau embedding process (which itself relies on Kundan-style gold-foil setting). It is not three competing styles. It's one nested system.
Kundan — The Setting Technique
The word Kundan refers to highly refined, pure gold used in foil form. In this technique, a thin sheet of gold foil is pressed and moulded around a stone — glass, semi-precious, precious, or even Polki diamonds — until it grips the stone firmly with no prongs, claws, or clasps involved.
Because the technique doesn't demand a particular type of stone, Kundan jewellery is often made using coloured glass or synthetic stones, which is exactly why it tends to be the most affordable and accessible of the three traditions. It's also why Kundan jewellery has that glowing, jewel-toned richness — the gold foil sits directly behind the stone and reflects light back through it, making even a glass stone look deep and luminous.
Origin: Refined in the Mughal courts of Delhi, and later perfected by artisans in Jaipur.
Polki — The Stone Itself
A Polki is a genuine, natural diamond that's cleaved or sliced from a rough stone and given a basic, smooth polish — not faceted or engineered into the precise geometric shapes you see in modern brilliant-cut diamonds. This is actually one of the most common misconceptions in the industry: Polki is widely called "uncut and unpolished," but that's not technically accurate. It does go through a minimal polishing process; what it doesn't go through is the multi-facet cutting that standardizes a stone's shape. So a Polki retains its original, irregular silhouette — a flat, foil-backed underside and a naturally uneven top face — rather than being shaped into symmetry.
Because it uses genuine diamonds and is traditionally set in 22–24K gold, authentic Polki jewellery sits at a considerably higher price point than everyday Kundan pieces. Its appeal isn't precision — it's the organic, slightly misty, warm brilliance that no two stones ever repeat. Every Polki piece is one of a kind, because every rough diamond is one of a kind.
Origin: The royal Rajput courts of Rajasthan.
Jadau — The Umbrella Craft Process
Jadau comes from the Hindi word "jadna" — to embed. This is the overarching technique in which stones (Polki, Kundan, pearls, or coloured gems) are fused directly into molten gold, rather than set afterwards as a separate step. The stone and the gold become structurally inseparable.
A genuine Jadau piece typically passes through the hands of at least three specialist artisans:
The ghadia, who shapes and moulds the base gold structure
The kundansaz, who presses the gold foil and sets the stones
The meenakari artist, who enamels the reverse side
Origin: Rajasthan and Gujarat, refined further under Mughal patronage.
Comparison Table
Meenakari - the Enamel Work Nobody Talks About
Here's a detail that trips up even confident jewellery enthusiasts: flip a genuine Polki or Jadau piece over, and you'll almost always find a burst of colourful enamel work on the back. This is Meenakari.
Meenakari is the art of fusing coloured enamel onto gold or silver, and in traditional Indian jewellery-making, it is treated as equally important as the front-facing stone work — not a decorative afterthought. In a true Jadau piece, a dedicated meenakari artist enamels the reverse side of the jewellery, often in floral or peacock motifs in reds, greens, and blues, so that the piece is just as beautiful worn "inside out."
Why does this matter to you as a student or buyer?
It's a fast authenticity check. Mass-produced imitation pieces almost never bother with a hand-enamelled back — a plain, unfinished reverse is a strong sign of a shortcut piece.
It signals technique lineage. Meenakari-backed pieces almost always sit within the Jadau/Polki family, since Kundan-only pieces (especially the more affordable ones) frequently skip this step.
It's a craft in its own right. Meenakari has its own specialists, its own regional styles (Jaipur's meenakari is famous for its ruby-red base), and its own centuries-old history — it just happens to live quietly on the flip side of the jewellery you already love.
So the next time you're evaluating a piece, don't just look at the front. Turn it over. The back tells you as much about the craftsmanship as the front does.
JK's Angle: Why This "Old" Knowledge Still Belongs in a Modern CAD Designer's Toolkit
At JK, we teach CAD alongside — never instead of — traditional knowledge like Kundan, Polki, and Jadau. A CAD tool can't tell you how a Kundan foil-set stone catches light, or what gold thickness a Jadau setting needs to survive hand-embedding — that only comes from understanding the craft itself.
So we take it beyond the classroom:
Cross-training, both ways — CAD students learn manual craftsmanship intricacies, and traditional-craft students learn CAD.
A study tour to Jaipur, the true hub of this art, with visits to cutting-polishing centres and working Jadau workshops.
A visit to the Jaipur Jewellery Show, where these techniques, their history, and their making are explained firsthand.
Students don't just learn the terms — they see the craft, meet the artisans, and learn to design for it.
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