It’s an August evening in Mumbai, and Rahul and Roshni Jhaveri, the husband-and-wife cofounders of contemporary fine jewelry brand Studio Renn, are at home in the city’s upscale Malabar Hill neighborhood. They’re on a video call with a reporter when the conversation turns to their two-year-old Godna collection. Named after an Indigenous term for tattoo, the minimalist diamond and 18-karat-gold jewels take inspiration from the rich tradition of tattoo art practiced by the Baiga tribe in central India’s Madhya Pradesh state. “It’s a rite of passage for the women, and they start getting tattooed at a very young age,” Rahul says. “By the time they’re married, they’re completely tattooed. They don’t have too many material things like jewelry to adorn themselves. So they’ve adorned themselves with tattoos.” Rahul pauses and gestures toward his legs, just off-screen. “I actually ended up getting a hand-poked tattoo myself, a fairly large one,” he says. “Over the past..
