Our Story

Ankamen Silver was founded in Bangkok in 1989 by Tao and Vipa, and they still run it today. The name comes from Tutankhamen, and a bust of the boy king stood in the first showroom. The idea behind the name is the idea behind everything we make: the ancient Egyptians wore jewellery as identity and protection, made to last a lifetime and be carried into the afterlife. Jewellery that endures is still what we build.

The first line was brass: a catalogue of more than a hundred designs, sold through university students who took a catalogue and a ring sizer and paid only after they sold. Within a few years the work stood in Narai Phand, Thailand's national handicraft centre, and at Vimanmek Mansion, King Rama V's golden-teak palace, where our Rama V locket became a best-seller.

Then Japan found us. Buyers who saw the pieces in Bangkok's department stores bought out whole deliveries, then started coming to the shop themselves, from all across Japan, by word of mouth. At the peak, a single client's orders passed 10,000 pieces, and client brands grew past 100 retail branches. The pieces travelled beyond the trade, too: when the Scorpions played their farewell show in Bangkok in 2011, the lead singer wore a belt and pendant made here.

The business has outlived the 1997 financial crisis, the 2011 flood that took our first catalogue, and a pandemic, by staying what it is: a family that keeps the design and the craft in its own hands.

What carried us through those years is the same thing that fills the order book now: relationships that hold. Buyers who found the shop by word of mouth in the 1990s still order today, and one of our largest clients came to us at the end of a fruitless search across Thailand, the same afternoon he prayed for a good supplier at the Erawan Shrine. Jewellery that endures comes from relationships that do.