In the last few posts we looked at various architectural documentaries that can prove inspiring for all sorts of designers, even for those ones creating jewellery pieces. It is indeed not rare to find connections between architecture and jewellery.
Let's look for example at the Jantar Mantar observatories in India ("jantar" comes from the Sanskrit terms "yantra", instrument, and "mantar", from "mantra" or "mantrana", meaning to consult or calculate, so the two words mean "calculation instrument").
In the 18th century the Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II commissioned the building of five observatories, in Delhi, Jaipur, Ujjain, Varanasi and Mathura.
The one in Jaipur was the biggest one as it featured 19 buildings (it is also recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site). This is the most significant, most comprehensive, and best preserved of India's historic observatories. The buildings were conceived as remarkably advanced instruments, they could indeed estimate with good accuracy the various angles to celestial bodies, the movements of planets, the moon and the sun over the entire year. The observatory was mainly employed to research celestial matters with each of the 19 instruments, made with local stone and marble, serving for different purposes. For example, the Samrat Yantra, a huge triangle made of local stone, was the largest sundial in the world (it has a 39m-long hypotenuse).
The Mishra Yantra (meaning "mixed" or "composite instrument", since it is a compilation of five different instruments) was unique to the Delhi observatory and was designed as a tool to determine the shortest and longest days of the year, but it could also be employed to indicate the exact moment of noon in various cities and locations regardless of their distance from Delhi.
Probably built by Maharaja Madho Singh, the son of Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II after his father's death, it was characterised by a concentric heart configuration.
The same shape is evoked by Cadar's mechanically engineered trademark heart-shaped kinetic cocktail ring (dubbed "Endless Heart"): designed by Michal Kadar, the ring, available in rosé, yellow (View this photo) and white gold with diamonds, shown above, has a golden heart at its centre surrounded by layers of gold set with hinges.
The gold layers move upward to create a larger, sculptural heart or down to create a flat heart. The "Endless Heart" ring symbolises for its designer the idea of love as two people form a strong bond, while maintaining individuality, but the complex structure of the ring also makes you think about the concentric hearts of the Mishra Yantra.
Cadar's Unity Cocktail ring is instead vaguely reminiscent in its design of the plan for the Rama Yantras at the Jaipur and Delhi observatories.
The two large cylindrical structures with open top, each with a pillar or pole at the center were used to measure the altitude of stars based on the latitude and the longitude on the earth. The pillar/post and walls are of equal height, which is also equal to the radius of the structure. The floor and interior surface of the walls are inscribed with scales indicating angles of altitude and Azimuth.
These structures are connected to the Digamsa Yantra, used for measuring the azimuth of any celestial object. The design and function system of the Digamsa Yantra was relatively less complex since its only function was to provide accurate azimuthal readings to complement the Rama Yantra. The 1m-high pillar in the middle of the two concentric outer circles was used to measure the azimuth of the sun and calculate the time of sunrise and sunset forecasts.
Its design is evoked by a ring by another designer, Yael Sonia, that features two coaxial walls turned into just one external structure topped with diamonds, a central pillar and a white diamond pavé ball playfully whirling inside the ring.
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