Want a unique diamond? Manpriya Bath wants you to consider a sliced one

In her West London home studio, Manpriya Bath, 56, sits across from me in a crisp blue shirt and barrel-leg jeans, her signature jewellery catching the light. She’s chic in the most understated, intentional way. A pair of curving earrings glint beneath her dark hair. Her tortoiseshell glasses balance on the bridge of her nose as she studies one of her own weightless diamond designs. Books and magazines are neatly stacked beside her, while sketches and gemstone trays hint at pieces in progress. “I’m working on more charms, pendants, and an animal collection, but I won’t tell you more because I’m superstitious,” she quips.

This studio is where she designs, consults with clients, and speaks to curious editors like me. Someone from Hong Kong is expected to visit next week. A former banker turned winemaker from the South of France is one of her longest-standing clients. So is an art collector based between London and New York.

Over the past few years, Bath, of the eponymous label Manpriya Jewellery, has turned the humble sliced diamond into her signature material. These unusually thin, irregular diamond cross-sections were once dismissed by the trade as second-grade, unworthy of the world of high jewellery. Bath saw something else. “They’re not perfect. Neither is life,” she says with a smile. Sliced diamonds hold their own little world—faint inclusions, soft shadows, unpredictable contours. “Each slice has its own fingerprint. You can’t replicate it.”

She’s built a vocabulary around their asymmetry. In her Ride the Wave earrings, they anchor sculptural, undulating gold forms that feel like wearable art. In her pendants and cocktail rings, they become the centrepiece, surrounded by polished edges or geometric rhodium finishes. “People want something unique but not intimidating,” she tells me. “The sliced diamonds bring accessibility to the idea of diamonds. They aren’t shouting luxury. They’re speaking in your tone.” You can wear them like her, with a shirt and jeans (and a perfect blowout), or you can wear it to a fashion show, as Khushi Kapoor did, with a Dior frock and a slicked-back bun.

Bath’s early jewellery memories are of watching a kaarigar at her mother’s jeweller’s bench in their garage, quietly setting stones while she “kept watch so nothing got stolen”. Her father sourced diamonds from Antwerp and emeralds from Jaipur. “He didn’t come from the jewellery world either,” she says, “but he had a very sharp eye. He taught me to value cut and quality over size.”

Three decades ago, she took those lessons to heart when she opened her first store—a tiny chowkidar’s room in New Delhi’s Santushti complex near the PM’s residence. It was a jewel box, literally and figuratively, and back then the label was called Monpri. “I displayed everything,” she says. “I hated that thing of pulling out trays from the safe. I wanted you to see it all at once.” Bath couldn’t afford to make everything in gold, so she started combining 18K gold with silver and setting semi-precious stones like peridot and amethyst with diamonds. “Back then, people in India thought amethysts were glass,” she laughs. “But I loved colour.”

That kind of boundary-blurring became her signature. Her pieces are never strictly bridal or Western, precious or costume; they are something else entirely. Think pavé-set cuffs worn by Delhi royalty, but done in silver and scattered with brown diamonds, now fashionably known as champagne or cognac stones. “I once spotted a supplier sorting through these brown diamonds and asked what they were,” she recalls. “He said, oh these? Just cheap rejects. I said, “I’ll take them all.’”

You could say that the impulse to seek beauty in what’s overlooked is at the heart of Bath’s sliced-diamond collections today. When she first encountered sliced diamonds, they were typically used in traditional jadau jewellery with foil-backed settings. “I didn’t really know what to do with them then,” she admits. “But slowly, I started experimenting.” One earring turned into a collection. A few loyal clients kept requesting more. “Every slice is different. Finding two that match for a pair of earrings can be maddening,” she says. “But that’s the point. They’re not perfect.” And so, she uses sliced diamonds in curvilinear, organic forms—reminders of life’s rhythm, its surges and stillness. “My logo is a snake,” she says. “It’s about transformation. You shed your skin and start again.”

After moving to the UK, she restarted her label in 2017, and now her collections sit alongside Comme des Garçons and Simone Rocha at Dover Street Market. In the middle, she upskilled and got a GIA degree, and she now works on capsule collections while continuing her bespoke practice. There are plans to explore enamel work, expand into the US, and even introduce wood as a material, paired with gemstones. “Gold is becoming a super luxury,” she notes. “So, I want to see how far I can push the design without it.”

Design, for Bath, is also deeply personal. There’s no big PR machine, no aggressive marketing. Her team is small—just her and a part-time assistant—and she thrives on one-on-one client interaction. And yet, her pieces feel startlingly contemporary. Like her, they walk the line between tradition and reinvention, sparkle and substance. You won’t find perfect symmetry in a Manpriya slice, but you will find depth, story, and soul.

As we wrap up, she tells me she’s been looking at artists like Louise Bourgeois and Barbara Hepworth lately—women who carved new shapes and new meanings in materials not always considered precious. “Jewellery doesn’t have to shout,” she says. “It just needs to feel like you. That’s when it becomes powerful.”