The house
Sita Shree opened in 1990 with a display case that had to be carried in through the shopfront because it would not go round the stairwell. It has never been moved since.
1990
Sita Shree opened with one bench, one safe and a display case that had to be carried in through the shopfront because it would not go round the stairwell. New Road was then, as now, where Kathmandu came to buy gold.
The first commissions were repairs. That is the ordinary way a jewellery house starts: people trust you with something broken long before they trust you with something new.
1998
Eight years in, enough families had commissioned wedding sets that the drawings needed their own book. It is still kept. When a daughter of a 1998 client commissions a set now, we take the original drawing out and put it on the counter next to the new one.
A surprising number of them are revised versions of their mother's piece rather than something new.
2009
The antique work began properly when the workshop committed to raising temple forms from sheet rather than casting imitations of them. It is slower, it cannot be scaled, and it is the reason the antique collection is always small.
It is also the only honest way to make that kind of relief. Cast repoussé is a photograph of repoussé.
2019
The house moved to writing gross, net and fine weight, purity and making charge separately on every tag, for every piece, without being asked. It is not a marketing position. It is simply the only way a customer can compare a price to anyone else's.
Today
Three generations of some families now wear pieces made here. The workshop is larger, the safe is better, and the display case has never been moved.
What has not changed is the sequence: draw it at size, wear it in wax, weigh it honestly, finish the back as carefully as the front.
How we work
A necklace always reads smaller on paper than at the collarbone, and correcting for that later costs gold.
Weight is the one thing nobody can judge from a drawing. Most designs get lighter at this stage.
Gross, net and fine, plus the making charge, written separately on every tag without being asked.
The side nobody sees gets the same time as the side everybody does. It is the whole argument, really.
Come and see them. Gold photographs badly.