Since time immemorial, there exists the reality of love for ornaments This love or passion for ornaments is legendary. As elsewhere in India, people of Bengal too have love for charming ornaments.

      Jewellery in Bengal ranges from fabulously expensive pieces fashioned in gold and precious stones. Previously for everyday occasions, Bengalee women often used to put in their hair, a hairpin having filigree.

As ear ornaments they used to wear kanbala, which is an elaborate ornament with wide flat surface covered with fine filigree decorations. They also used to wear ornaments like the jhumkas, pendant earrings of bells of graded sizes. Nakchabi, a nose ornament was also very much in fashion in those days.

Ear Ornaments

For the neck, the most commonly worn ornament was the pancha or sapta lahari har i.e. a necklace of five or seven strands. The typical upper arm ornament was the baju, a thick, round, hollow bangle made of gold or silver with intricate chased decorations and the lower arm ornament was the mantasha.

Neck Ornaments

Apart from these gold and silver ornaments, Bengalee women also used to wear red and white bangles (sankha made of conch shell and pala made of some plastic material),often with delicate ornamental work, as a symbol of matrimony.

Sankha

      Once it was customary for every married woman to wear these bangles as the bangles assumed a lot of ritualistic relevance. Since the ritualistic relevance is gradually disappearing, women these days, hardly wear these bangles. Nowa, a typical type of bangle made of iron, copper and gold, which is worn by the bride at the doorstep of her new home, is still very much in vogue. Ornaments made of flowers are also very common among Bengalee women. Floral ornaments like flower crowns, flower bracelets, flower armlets, fashioned beautifully from flowers are adorned mostly on occasions like marriage. Apart from ornaments, use of floral garlands as headdress is much in fashion among the Bengalees from time immemorial.

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      With change in time, there has been a change in the trend of jewellery too. Women are no longer fond of wearing heavy jewellery and in this process Nakchhabis went out of fashion but have made a token return in the form of a tiny precious stone set in gold or a plain gold stud fixed on the outer lobe of the left nostril. Kanbala and Jhumkas have given place to modern makri, a simple hoop for the ears, which is very popular with young girls.

Churis or thin bangles coming in hundreds of designs are the most common of the wrist ornaments worn today. Apart from gold and silver ornaments, exquisitely rich and intricate jewellery designs are finding a new clientele among the women of Bengal. Many novel concepts and motifs have come up in jewellery making.

Gold Bangles

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      Ornaments, which are much in fashion among the tribals, are unique in style and designs. The tribal people wear unique silver or brass necklaces. They have many solid looking ornaments with cast, chased or embossed designs. They also have a variety of lockets and pendants hung from necklaces of beads and wood. Simple glass-bead necklaces of many strands twisted into thick ropes are also very popular with them. These unique ornaments of the tribals are gaining popularity and are already much in fashion among the urban women.

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