Harakh Haveli

With a focus almost exclusively on creating diamond confections, Harakh produces exquisite and breathtaking luxury jewelry. Each piece is a work of masterful expertise, from the firm’s elegant diamond stud earrings to its elaborate drop necklaces. 

Harakh Mehta — a fourth-generation jeweler — founded the company when he was 38. Having been immersed in diamond cutting and gemology since childhood, Mehta sought to elevate his family's reputation for excellence to new heights.

Harakh’s great-grandfather, Manilal Chandulal Mehta, began the family journey in 1916. As one of the first people of Indian heritage to establish a diamond office in Antwerp, he began supplying the royal family of South India with loose diamonds. Manatil Mehta's son Rasiklal Manilal Mehta opened a workshop to cut and polish diamonds in 1945. In 1972, Harakh's father Samir Mehta carried on the family tradition by opening his own business in Mumbai, and in 1980 Harakh's mother Nayna Mehta opened her workshop to begin designing diamond jewelry.

Harakh Mehta studied in the United States at the Gemological Institute of America. He moved back to Mumbai to learn all he could from his mother and father about grading diamonds and designing jewelry.

Mehta dreamed of creating exquisite jewelry that also represented the spirituality of his home country. His family encouraged him to pursue his passion, and Mehta opened his firm in New York City in 2017. Today Mehta is a partner in the family business, Bombay Jewellery Manufacturers, and operates an atelier in Mumbai — where he is based. There are also four Harakh boutiques in the United States. The firm’s founder frequently draws on nature in his designs and sets diamonds in platinum or 18-karat gold. The atelier produces less than 200 pieces annually.

In 2019, Le Bal, Paris named Harakh Mehta the official jeweler for that year's event, and in 2020, the designer won the New York Rising Star Award for fine jewelry. 

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Rooted in centuries of history of adornment dating back to the ancient world, modern jewelry reimagines traditional techniques, forms and materials for expressive new pieces. As opposed to contemporary jewelry, which responds to the moment in which it was created, modern jewelry often describes designs from the 20th to 21st centuries that reflect movements and trends in visual culture.

Modern jewelry emerged from the 19th-century shift away from jewelry indicating rank or social status. The Industrial Revolution allowed machine-made jewelry using electric gold plating, metal alloys and imitation stones, making beautiful jewelry widely accessible. Although mass production deemphasized the materials of the jewelry, the vision of the designer remained important, something that would be furthered in the 1960s with what’s known as the “critique of preciousness.”

A design fair called the “Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes” brought global attention to the Art Deco style in 1925 and gathered a mix of jewelry artists alongside master jewelers like Van Cleef & Arpels, Mauboussin and Boucheron. Art Deco designs from Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels unconventionally mixed gemstones like placing rock crystals next to diamonds while borrowing motifs from eclectic sources including Asian lacquer and Persian carpets. Among Cartier’s foremost design preoccupations at the time were high-contrast color combinations and crisp, geometric forms and patterns. In the early 20th century, modernist jewelers like Margaret De Patta and artists such as Alexander Calder — who is better known for his kinetic sculptures than his provocative jewelry — explored sculptural metalwork in which geometric shapes and lines were preferred over elaborate ornamentation.

Many of the innovations in modern jewelry were propelled by women designers such as Wendy Ramshaw, who used paper to craft her accessories in the 1960s. During the 1970s, Elsa Peretti created day-to-night pieces for Tiffany & Co. while designers like Lea Stein experimented with layering plastic, a material that had been employed in jewelry since the mid-19th century and had expanded into Bakelite, acrylics and other unique materials.

Find a collection of modern watches, bracelets, engagement rings, necklaces, earrings and other jewelry on 1stDibs.