Maldives: A Rinbudhoo Island goldsmith, South Nilandhoo Atoll, 1980

On the eastern rim of the South Nilandhoo Atoll lies the tiny island of Rinbudhoo. Here, in one of the quietest and cleanest villages in the Maldives, lives the country's only group of hereditary goldsmiths. Melting down Victorian gold sovereigns and Marie-Therèse thalers as casually as recently-imported mini-ingots from Dubai, they manufacture an exquisite range of chains, necklaces, ear-rings, finger-rings and amulets. Asia's smallest and least-known nation, the Republic of Maldives, lies scattered from north to south across a 750-kilometre sweep of the Indian Ocean 500 kilometres south-west of Sri Lanka. More than 1000 islands, together with innumerable banks and reefs, are grouped in a chain of nineteen atolls which extends from a point due west of Colombo to just south of the equator.