DUBAI: The jewelry maker talks about her gold statement earrings, ‘The Lebanese Mandaloun Earrings,’ that is inspired by history and traditional Lebanese architecture.
Jihan Chehayeb is a designer and an architect. (Supplied)
I'm an architect — I've been practicing quite a long time now. Architecture is a very wide field, so there are lots of things that we dig deep into. It's not just designing buildings, we do a lot of research. Architecture and design go together.
I started off making bookmarks. By doing them, I gathered all the things that I love in one item. I wanted to relay a message to the world, highlighting books and reading. I wanted an item with an architectural feature to tell the story of our treasures in the Middle East. The idea was to tell the world, our new generation, and ourselves as well, about the treasures that we have and how we need to appreciate them.
There's a story behind every item I make. In 2018, I was working on the bookmark and I started participating in fairs and exhibitions. I noticed that people wanted to show the bookmark — to wear it; they didn't want to hide them away in books. So this is how they became 'jewelry bookmarks.'
Her gold statement earrings are called ‘The Lebanese Mandaloun Earrings.’ (Supplied)
The Mandaloun window has a beautiful story, which I love to tell. During the 17th century — the Ottoman period, we had a great prince, Fakhr al-Din. He was exiled, and chose to live among the Medici in Florence. He was living in beautiful castles and was inspired by the Mandaloun — a double window. They call it the Mandaloun because the mandolin player used to sit by this window. That’s how this style came to the area, not just in Lebanon, but Palestine and Syria too.
I do the design, then laser cut them with brass, and then we polish it and gold plate it. The gold plating preserves the material better, so it doesn’t fade. It's a mixture of machinery and handmade techniques. The earrings have a rigid shape, are very lightweight, and not very large.
Actually, I'm amazed by the number of people wearing them — not only Arab people, but foreigners are also interested in them.
