Since opening her shop in 1999, Tracy Kitching has travelled to India twice a year to source the unique treasures to be found at Opium. She spends 5 weeks putting together each shipment, seeking out architectural antiques, colonial furniture, decorative carvings and sculpture. This can include significant pieces such as stone & wood temple pillars, palace doors from Rajasthan, colonial beds from Calcutta, stunning mirrors made from 18th century carved doorway frames, planters furniture from Kerala, marble elephants from Udaipur & Hindu deities carved in marble from Varanasi. It also includes such popular finds as colonial porcelain door knobs, carved door hook panels, old spice and dowry boxes, antique brass temple oil lamps & golden Tibetan 'singing' bowls. Tracy also likes to support fine contemporary works by craftspeople in the villages and towns of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh. These include beautiful bed throws in hand-worked appliqué & silk; block printed quilts from Jaipur; white marble lotus flower bowls and soap dishes; exquisitely embroidered kaftans and baby pyjamas from Lucknow; sari and leather bound photo albums from Udaipur; fluffy angora children's mittens from the tribespeople of Himachal Pradesh and reed mats and cushions from the tribes of Manipur. India, and particularly Jaipur, is famous for its wealth of semi-precious stones. Inspired by these fabulous stones and her fascination for the beautiful antique Indian Mughal jewellery, Tracy began designing pieces for herself and her family, before putting a small collection together for the shop. It was an immediate success and over the past 4 years, her unique jewellery designs have become a signature of Opium. The emphasis is on delicately cut stones with fabulous clarity and colour at affordable prices. She particularly favours the more unusual stones, such as tourmaline, blue opal, lemon topaz, rainbow moonstone, laboradite and blue topaz and is constantly adding new stones and varying subtleties of colour to her range. Her designs are fluid and she particularly loves to create necklaces : "I select stones for their extraordinary depth of colour and reflective light. A necklace designed with such fabulous stones brings a glow to the skin and lights up the eyes. I design to flatter the beauty of a woman's face and décolletage with these amazing stones." To find out more about Opium and how it all began, you can click on the Mail on Sunday YOU Magazine and the Financial Times Cult Shops articles below. You Magazine        Financial Times