At first glance, designer Ravi Kheni’s floral ring appears to cradle a shard of glass. But a closer look reveals a large, flat antique diamond, with delicate facets evoking ripples on water. It’s part of the designer’s debut collection, unveiled in the U.S. in June, that showcases rare diamonds in sculptural and quietly radical settings.
Hailing from a long line of diamond dealers, Kheni could easily have followed in his ancestors’ footsteps. Instead, after working with his family for five years, he chose a different path and relocated to Turkey in 2016 to explore new artistic horizons. During his time in Istanbul, he traded in antique diamonds, immersing himself in the city’s legacy of crafts and antiquities and training under an Armenian master jeweler. “He taught me how to make metal flow, how to sculpt it, and how to balance proportion and volume,” Kheni says during a recent visit to New York—his first trip to the United States.
Kheni’s technical prowess is illustrated in pieces like this bracelet with 30 oval-cut tension-set diamonds fanning out around the wrist.
Courtesy of R—KHENI jewelry
Kheni returned to Mumbai in 2024, brimming with new ideas and skills and a collection of vintage stones assembled over several years. Each of his designs begins with such gems—most often an antique diamond. “There’s a strange poetry in the proportions of old stones,” he says. “A chipped edge, a softened vein—if it’s ancient, I cannot resist. It becomes more than a diamond; it becomes a vessel of memory, of time.” A stone might sit on his desk for days or even weeks before a design takes shape in his mind. Once inspiration strikes, he sketches the piece and produces a clay model to explore the proportion and volume. Each example is then made in silver “to see the whole journey of a piece” before artisans craft them in precious metals. His ultimate goal: to create a design “where stone and metal become one.”
From left to right: a cushion-cut diamond is surrounded by “moval”-cut diamonds set at 90-degree angles; a tension-set diamond appears like a shard of glass set in a brushed-gold ring.
Courtesy of R—KHENI jewelry
His distinctive pieces combine decorative Mughal motifs and architecture with the refined lines of Bauhaus furnishings and the lyrical beauty he observes in nature. One ring evokes an insect, albeit one created with a rare unheated pigeon-blood Mozambique ruby and wings made of elongated old-mine-cut diamonds. It’s set in a subtle brushed white gold, and the metal almost disappears. Another ring illustrates his technical mastery: In it, a cushion-cut diamond is surrounded by “moval”-cut diamonds (a shape that combines marquise and oval). Tension-set at 90-degree angles, the smaller stones appear like undulating waves.
In his first year, he created 35 unique pieces but only recently began sharing them with prospective collectors. “I keep them in a safe until the right client comes along,” says Kheni. Now that word is out, they likely won’t stay in his vault for long.
