In Beirut, contradiction is part of the fabric of life. Beauty and volatility exist side by side, and the city’s deep-rooted creativity has grown under pressure. It is here that sisters Dima and Tania Nawbar have built L’Atelier Nawbar, a jewellery maison that blends emotional expression with commercial enterprise. “We wanted to make jewellery that you could wear anywhere on the street,” explains Dima from the Lebanese capital. “Not put in a safe and never see.”
Their philosophy was shaped by growing up in London. Hailing from the Nawbar family, which has made precious jewellery in Beirut and London since 1891, the sisters found an unlikely starting point via UK high-street brand Topshop. Although flimsy, its accessories offered something the sisters hadn’t seen in fine jewellery – casual ease.
This was in stark contrast to their upbringing. The sisters were raised among diamonds and other gems, with holidays spent sourcing stones from India. Yet the more precious a piece, the less wearable it seemed. “Every birthday and Christmas, we were given diamonds,” Dima says. “We’d look at each other and think: ‘Where are we going to wear these?’”
For Dima and Tania, despite the obvious beauty, grand jewellery felt disconnected from modern life, as if it “doesn’t fit into our world today any more”, explains Dima. They sought a chic alternative to pieces that felt too formal and too conspicuous. Their solution was simple – keep the materials, change the attitude.
When the sisters took over the family business in 2010, they dismantled conventional practices. They introduced vibrant-coloured enamel and hand-carved stones to add warmth. Designed with layering in mind, the idea was to allow customers to accumulate pieces over time, and to create jewellery that was as fun as it was beautiful. “People wouldn’t understand what we were doing,” Dima says. “We broke all the rules.”
They went further still. In their Beirut boutique, a workshop was built in full view, sweeping away the secrecy normally surrounding jewellery. Like a chef working in the centre of a restaurant, artisans worked within the sight of clients. “We wanted to show the roughness, the work and the process that goes into the actual making,” Dima explains.
“We still use the old techniques. We haven’t gone into mass production,” she adds. The easy route would have been to head to somewhere such as Hong Kong, or get machines that can churn out a piece in seconds. “But you feel it. They really have no soul.”
Instead, every piece is lovingly handmade in Lebanon, even amid the drones of war. It is an approach that feels distinctly Lebanese. The country’s creative energy – from restaurants and art to fashion and jewellery – is inseparable from the instability that shadows it. Conflict, economic uncertainty and the ever-present threat of violence form the backdrop to daily life.
And yet, paradoxically, this fragility fuels a sense of urgency. “The instability causes a drive to do things spontaneously,” says Dima. “We don’t know how long peace is going to last, so let’s get things moving.”
That immediacy lends the brand a certain agility. Unlike other houses, bound by factory production cycles in far-off countries, L’Atelier Nawbar works closely with its craftspeople, all of whom are in Lebanon. This allows designs to evolve quickly and ideas to be tested in real time.
But this intimacy also exposes a quieter crisis. As older artisans retire, fewer young people are entering the trade, drawn instead to more stable professions. The erosion of these skills poses a threat to the ancient traditions the Nawbars are seeking to preserve. “We support as many workshops as we can,” Tania explains. “We have our main workshops, but we feed other workshops with work to help them to survive.”
For the sisters, jewellery is much more than adornment. It is intimate, worn against the skin and shaped by the body itself, through movement and even skin chemistry.
“It’s an extension of yourself,” says Dima. “Maybe it’s an heirloom, or maybe it’s something you bought with your first paycheck or when you broke up with someone. These are things that you keep on your skin and that you feel naked without.”
Their pieces are designed accordingly. The Bloop Moon ring – a delicate arc of 18k gold and coloured enamel edged with white diamonds – offers a discreet flash of colour only the wearer can see. The Pillar bangle, made in 18k gold with bold tones of turquoise, lapis or onyx with bands of white diamonds, is made to be stacked around the wrist.
Pendants and rings include the Diamond Sun Dawn Stoned, a disc of mother-of-pearl decorated with stones such as orange citrine or green topaz with a sunburst of white diamonds. There is the faceted shape of the Mini Heart pendant in rose gold, enamel and diamonds, as well as the tubular form of the Warrior Star Seed, in 18k gold inlaid with lapis and studded with diamonds. All have been designed to be slowly built into a personal collection. “You don’t have to buy it all at the same time. One piece after the other also creates this drama,” Dima says.
Unusually, customers are also encouraged to return, even years later, to rework a pendant or change a colour. Most things are possible, Dima explains, and they are always happy to have the conversation. “We want you to continue wearing these pieces. We don’t want you to just put them in the safe.
“We’re lucky because we have the liberty of making or changing things around on the spot. We don’t have to go Thailand and wait,” she adds.
After years of hard work, including facing scepticism about a brand hailing from Lebanon, L’Atelier Nawbar is now stocked at some of the most influential retailers such as Harrods, Net-a-Porter and Bloomingdale’s, along with regional platforms including Ounass and That Concept Store. “Being from this part of the region has definitely made it much harder for us to prove ourselves internationally. It was hard to get to where we are.”
Still, the sisters have never been tempted to take the easy route by jumping on trends, but instead remain guided more by instinct than strategy. “Nothing about our brand is deliberate,” says Tania. “And we get in trouble with the consultants. They tell us we need a plan, but we follow our gut.”
It is, perhaps, this refusal to conform – coupled with a deep respect for craft – that gives the brand its distinctive resonance. Each piece carries not only the mark of the artisan who made it, but also the imprint of a place, a family and a way of seeing the world.
“Everything that we do is a double-edged sword,” explains Dima. “We love Beirut and we love Lebanon, and we love being part of it. And I don’t know if we would have been able to have such a distinct DNA if we were from anywhere else, because Lebanon is about contradictions and so is our jewellery.”
And in an increasingly homogenous world, being able to draw on the chaotic energy of Beirut – where nothing is ever entirely certain – to create pieces filled with beauty and joy, may just be the most valuable thing of all.
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