Unbound by Beads explores Rajasthan’s Meghwal beadwork traditions at London Craft Week

At this year’s London Craft Week, jewellery is transformed into a vessel of migration, memory, and inherited histories. Unbound by Beads, a research-led exhibition by Moi Fine Jewellery in collaboration with Princess Diya Kumari Foundation Artisan Collective, brought the overlooked cultural and material histories of glass beadwork among the women artisans of Rajasthan’s pastoral Meghwal community into compelling contemporary focus.

Reclaiming Rajasthan’s beadwork histories

Curated by Meneesha Kaur Kelly and spatially designed by Armaan Bansal, the exhibition unfolded almost like an anthropological diary—layered with archival research, oral histories, material exploration, and contemporary design intervention. At its centre was Serai, a jewellery capsule within Moi Collectibles that reinterprets beadwork traditions long embedded within the Meghwal community.

For Kunal Shah and co-founder-designer Puja Shah, the project began not with ornamentation, but inquiry. “While researching traditional jewellery-making practices in Western India, we came across glass beads from the region that revealed a lesser-known history of trade and global exchange dating back to the 17th century,” Kunal says. What initially appeared to be a material study soon opened into something far larger—a narrative tracing maritime trade routes, Venetian workshops, and the afterlife of objects carried across borders and generations.

Those beads, once transported through global trading networks, continue to exist today in the hands of Meghwal women artisans in Barmer, where beadwork remains both inherited practice and personal language. Through the Princess Diya Kumari Foundation Artisan Collective—led by Princess Gauravi Kumari—the Moi founders were introduced directly to these communities, allowing the research to move beyond observation into immersion.

“We were able to undertake on-site visits and document an audio-visual archive of local beadwork traditions,” Kunal shares. “Through this fieldwork and research, we have been able to bring together these different strands into a cohesive narrative for the exhibition.” The exhibition is structured across material histories, living practice, and contemporary reinterpretation positioning craft simultaneously as documentation and design.

What makes Unbound by Beads particularly resonant is the way it reframes craft not as static preservation, but as an evolving cultural language. Migration, memory, and materiality are become tangible through beads that have travelled continents, techniques passed through generations of women, and objects that continue to shift meaning over time.

“Migration refers to the journey of beads across trade routes, and their continued use within communities reflects the memory and inherited knowledge systems,” explains Kunal. “Material, in turn, is how we understand these layered histories and identities.”

That philosophy extends into Serai, which avoids reducing traditional beadwork into mere aesthetic inspiration. Instead, the capsule attempts to hold space for continuity and reinterpretation at once. “Our approach has always been to engage with craft while acknowledging its ongoing relevance as a living tradition,” he says. “With Serai, the intention was to bring together a cultural dialogue between past and current living traditions, without losing the depth and context of the original practice.”

Rather than preservation through nostalgia, Moi proposes preservation through evolution. “Our intention is not just to preserve the craft, but to bring it into contemporary relevance,” Kunal adds. “This ensures that the tradition continues to evolve while retaining its authenticity.”

In Unbound by Beads, jewellery turns into a repository of stories about migration, identity, labour, and memory passed across generations.  

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