An Entrepreneurial Proposal
Many museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum in New York, sell replicas of some of the historical jewelery in their collection. Typically the quality of the replica is significantly lower than the quality of the original—cast when the original was constructed, sometimes using glass instead of the original gemstones. Typically the replicas are expensive.
For quite a long time, I have been seeing imported jewelery, usually in silver, coming from places such as Bali and India, with a quality of execution comparable to that in historical pieces—precise filigree, some of it possibly done by the fusion/colloidal hard soldering technique developed in antiquity to do fine filigree and granulation without having the details blurred by solder. Such jewelery is, materials aside, better than the museum replicas—and much less expensive.
This suggests an interesting possibility for an entrepreneur with an interest in historical jewelery and suitable contacts somewhere in the third world. Put together, and web, a collection of pictures of pieces of historical jewelery. Locate craftsmen willing and able to make copies of those pieces. Offer to make, for online customers, any piece in the collection, at a suitable price. For a somewhat higher price, guarantee never to make another copy of the same piece.
This particular example occurred to me because I happen to be interested in historical jewelery. But there must be many other market niches of the same sort, categories of goods for which the combination of online marketing and hand-craft technology would make it possible for customers to get unique items of special interest to them, while providing profitable work for craftsmen in low income parts of the world.