KATMANDU -- Suman Ratna Dhakawa spills a tray of rings onto a bench and runs his fingers through the mass of metal as if it were a liquid. "My family all have been jewelry-makers, craftsmen or artists," says Dhakawa. "I have jewelry-making in my blood."

Suman Ratna Dhakawa in his Katmandu studio.

But that's not all that courses through the veins of the 39-year-old Nepalese man, whose Valhalla-brand jewelry is a common feature of the magazines driving Tokyo's fashion scene. Little do Japan's best-dressed know that they are buying the artworks of a designer born into a Katmandu Valley dynasty that traces its roots back to the clan of Buddha.

The Dhakawas are a subgroup of the Shakya clan, whose heritage reaches through history to the kingdom of Kapil Bastu, south of Nepal, in what is now India. Siddhartha Guatama, as Buddha was known before he attained nirvana, was also born into the Shakya clan 2,500 years ago.

Customers take a look at the Shamballa Showroom in Tokyo

"We still believe we come from the same family as Buddha," Dhakawa says from the Katmandu studio where he and a staff of 10 fashion his designs.

All men in the Shakya clan become monks once in their life as homage to their origins. Dhakawa was initiated as a child, and his smile radiates with a purity that is disconcerting and unique in an almost unearthly way -- like the swirls of color that render his creations strangely organic, refreshing forms in the drab, concrete tangle of Tokyo.

As did Buddha, Dhakawa journeyed far in his youth. His adventures took him to Hong Kong as an art trader and, later, as a restorer in northern Europe, where Dhakawa's path intersected with Japan.

Tradition with a twist

Just as they may know nothing of his heritage, the young people that have made the artists' creations a hit in Japan may be unaware that the ornaments were inspired by the methods of Japan's famed sword-makers.

Valhalla jewelry

Dhakawa employs the technique of mokume game, or layered steel, used for making Japanese katana, though he has never set foot in the country and learned the craft not from a Japanese master metalsmith but a German student friend.

He spent four years of trial and error at his home in the Himalayas refining the process for the purpose of jewelry-making. His experiments spawned a style of repeatedly overlaying and interlaying silver and copper to create a wood-grain motif.

Dhakawa sandwiches together different layers of different metal sheets, then melts them into one. "Then you hammer it, twist it," he says. "With filing, you get different patterns and shapes."

Dhakawa was attracted to the Japanese technique because he could see that it helped him to overcome advantages held by designers in the West. "I was traveling a lot and know what other countries can make with fast machines," he said.

"I was always looking for what machines cannot make, so they cannot easily steal my designs. This [mokume game], I find, is a perfect item for that. No one has done it. It is very complicated to do and [makes for] an excellent product."

Dhakawa's designs now sit beside those of Gucci, Tiffany and Co., Hermes, Chanel and Louis Vuitton on store shelves.

"When we see his jewelry, we get the sense that he has spent a long time quietly processing his work to achieve this motif," says Dhakawa's agent Hatsumi Yamagishi, who displays the designer's work at her Shamballa showrooms in Ebisu and New York.

"His jewelry silently gives us a warm feeling. His work tells us that he is a spiritually high human being."

Japan has seen a boom in silver jewelry since the 1990s. Among the nation's young, especially young men, heavy and hard silver jewelry is popular. "Now, in the 21st century, this boom has leveled off and people are looking for a new trend," said Yamagishi.

Mysterious aura

"Valhalla is different from the popular items of the 1990s. It has excellent technique and quality. This motif and technique, born in Japan in the 13th century, now returns to Japan from Nepal, giving it a mysterious aura in the eyes of Japanese people."

For Dhakawa, his success in Japan, where his jewelry retails for between 8,000 yen and 34,000 yen, offers him the chance to pass on his ideas to other artists in Nepal, where metal-craft remains grounded in tradition.

"There are very few people like me, modifying the old techniques," he says. "The only strength I have is that I have traveled a lot."

Dhakawa hopes to set up a college in Katmandu to teach jewelry-making.

"I am an art lover and like the fine items -- something that is created from the heart. And I get self-satisfaction in that I get to do what I wanted done, and also I can teach the people not only the arts but also the business."