Lovely in Terracotta. Raw, rustic and understated. A lovely string of clay brown melon shaped, terracotta engraved beads strung together on a deep pink thread. Terracotta jewellery ranks among the oldest known forms of jewellery in the world, harking back to various ancient civilisations and in India, right back to the Indus Valley Civilisation, as excavations prove. Terracotta is hard red earthenware. The clay is first purified and moulded, mostly by hand into a desired shape and then baked in the sun or fired in a kiln at a very high temperature to give it a stone consistency. When clay is fired, it transforms to a natural brick colour or shades of brown, pink, or even white, depending on the quality of the clay. When clay is fired in the kiln with saw dust, it is burnt to a natural black colour. The Jewelry can then be treated with varying rough or glazed finishes, as preferred and then embellished with paint, engraving , embossing or embedding with beads and stones if required.