Moksh pairs aluminium from retired aircraft with gold to make sustainable jewellery

The Mumbai-India based Moksh is making headlines with its sustainable approach of making ornaments with reclaimed aluminium from abandoned aircraft. The company transforms uncommon materials into art pieces with the help of a specific technology.

Its recent innovation, ‘Shourai’, meaning ‘the future’ in Japanese, has practically been carved out of abandoned aircraft.

The aluminium extracted from aeroplanes' bodies has been forged into accurate cubes, arranged later with gold and diamonds to give the jewellery a precise yet pointy look.

This latest collection has been surveilled by a design solutions company, Bandit, which wishes to reinvent the method of traditional jewellery production, bringing innovations to the design.

While revealing the ideology behind the jewellery brand, the CEO of Moksh, Milan Chokshi said: “We want to focus on good design. Working with Bandit allowed us to explore the other end of the jewellery spectrum from gemstones and legacy concerning design. While one kind of jewellery is elaborate and detailed, this is simple and efficient – yet both are engineered with the same principles. Comfort, balance and simplicity.”

To add to the excitement of the creation, Bandit CEO Satyajit Vetoskar narrated that it had been by complete chance that he came across a friend who repaired aircraft, which has led to the idea of using aluminium. He added: “After many visits to his factory and further leads to a larger aircraft junkyard, I got hooked on all kinds of aluminium scrap. It was around the same time that Moksh had asked me to design a jewellery collection for them. This highlights the immense possibility of using a common material, like aluminium, to create uncommon designs.”

Aluminium and gold seldom combine as they are diametrical opposites if we consider the chemical compositions. Therefore, putting these two completely different materials together was a great challenge though the final pure cube form completely undermines the initial difficult stage.

Satyajit Vetoskar also referred to Japanese minimalist art and said: “This inspiration was not just from a Japanese clean minimalist look, but was largely about how simple the jewellery is to make.”

Industrial CNC machines have been utilised in aluminium cubes production, while gold is a soft metal that needs to be tamed by hand. The brushed aluminium cubes combined with polished gold are woven into jewellery by simple rods. This sustainable design requires minimum craftsmanship aligned with a lesser energy consumption ratio and lower waste excretion. The item is then packed in recycled paper, shaped so that the exterior looks like a cube also.