It was just before closing time, at about 6pm one Monday 10 years ago. Alia Mouzannar was finishing up for the day in her family’s jewellery boutique in Beirut, when a woman entered the shop. “She looked at a few things and liked what she saw and then asked for my father [Walid Mouzannar],” recalls Alia. “He wasn’t in, so she said: ‘Please give him this and ask him to call me. I am Zaha Hadid and this is my card.’ ”
Although Alia had recently joined her father and uncle’s business Aziz & Walid Mouzannar, she had trained as an architect and standing in front of her was a woman whose work she had long studied and greatly admired.
Time passed and the family became friends with the celebrated Iraqi-born, London-based architect, whose unique vision has brought her international acclaim and a Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004 – the first woman to win the award.
One day, not long ago, Alia, who now runs the jewellers with her father and her cousin Dori (son of Aziz), asked Hadid if she might like to collaborate on a piece of jewellery. “I thought it might be fun for her,” says Alia, “and within 20 minutes she emailed back. It was a lesson in the life of working with Zaha Hadid, because she is so efficient and respectful.”
Hadid’s sensuous petal cuff is a dramatic sculpted piece in white gold, set with hundreds of tiny, twinkling diamonds in a web pattern that echoes some of her early architectural work. There is also a black-gold version. The first cuff will be unveiled at Hadid’s ZHD Gallery in Clerkenwell, London, in a pop-up exhibition of Alia and Dori’s own collections from November 13 to 15. The cuff will also be available from the Aziz & Walid Mouzannar jewellery boutique in Beirut, retailing for £55,000 (Dh323,000).
Hadid is as enthusiastic about the outcome and collaborating with the Mouzannars as they are about her. They have taken, she says, “full advantage of Alia’s expertise and Dori’s knowledge to explore the beauty of natural forms and the unique properties of its materials”. She admires the Mouzannars’s quality of craftsmanship and has built up her own collection of their jewellery. Hadid is enthusiastic about what the cousins are achieving with jewellery and the way that they “celebrate the materials and composition in the rich history and traditions of Lebanon’s jewellers”. So much so, in fact, that there will be another jewellery collaboration in 2015.
Beirut has a history of crafting jewellery dating back to the Phoenicians and the ancient Greeks. The Mouzannar family has been making fine jewellery since the mid-18th century. Dori and Alia Mouzannar are the sixth generation in this family business. Selim Mouzannar, another Lebanese jeweller, comes from another branch of the family tree. It was Dori and Alia’s fathers who established the business (under their own names) in the famous jewellery souq, which subsequently was destroyed during the civil war.
“My father told me many stories about those days,” says Alia, who says she regrets she never experienced the atmosphere of the souq for herself.
She describes the jewellery her father and uncle created as “very arty, beautiful and refined”.
Her cousin Dori joined the family business in 1991 after completing a degree in economics. Inspired by the family craft, he studied gemmology and started designing jewellery 15 years ago. Alia joined him 10 years ago.
“We complement each other and share a vision and respect for our work.”
They take the family’s signature Middle Eastern and antiquity-inspired creations and add their own refined, contemporary aesthetic. However their styles are remarkably different. Dori Mouzannar’s jewellery is bold, tactile and organic, designed for the customer looking for a statement – such as his Meteor rings set with 20 different sizes of rose-cut diamonds that are inverted to create a textured surface.
“I think there is a lightness and volume to his designs,” says Alia. Her style is refined, conceptual and delicate. You can see the architectural training expressed in her arabesque and geometric, interchangeable designs. For instance, flat, layered discs and hoops in a pair of earrings can be dismantled and reconstructed in different ways.
“I am very graphic in my designs, that is true, but there is also a playfulness,” she says.
Such contrast adds strength to the brand and it’s finding a ready fan base in the Middle East. Alia and Dori’s collection is available at Qirdala in Kuwait and there are a few pieces at the Dubai concept store Comptoir 102.
“Our younger customers are very aware of their culture but also of innovation, so we are introducing heritage and culture in our designs, but in a way that is more contemporary,” says Alia. Customers appreciate the artisanship. “This is about real luxury: not about carats of gems, but the value of craftsmanship.”
artslife@thenational.ae
