Runal Shah

Founder and Designer of Metal Noir

Runal Shah founded Metal Noir in Los Angeles in 2007, bringing together a background in diamonds and jewelry manufacturing with an enduring interest in architecture, automotive design, furniture, industrial objects and the built environment.

From the Diamond Trade to Making

Fine jewelry was part of Shah’s life before Metal Noir. His father entered the global diamond trade in the late 1970s and moved into jewelry manufacturing in Los Angeles in 1987. Shah later apprenticed alongside him, learning the tolerances, stone setting, finishing and construction involved in turning an idea into a finished piece.

Making What He Couldn’t Find

Metal Noir began from a simple problem: Shah could not find jewelry he wanted to wear. Instead of beginning with traditional motifs, he started constructing the objects he felt were missing—using grids, repetition, channels, negative space and engineered scale as a vocabulary.

Architecture in Miniature

That vocabulary became the foundation of Metal Noir’s architectural jewelry language. The signature pattern draws from the city grid seen from above, translating an urban structure into jewelry that can be recognized through geometry rather than a conventional logo.

A Los Angeles Practice

The relationship between design and manufacturing remains central to the house. Individual waxes, casting, setting and hand finishing are not treated as downstream production steps; they are part of how Shah resolves proportion, surface and structure.

From Los Angeles, the practice continues through collection work, bespoke commissions and selected cultural projects, all tied together by the same pursuit of precision and architectural form.