Special Report: Jewelry – Translating Violence Into Beauty (NYTimes)- By NAZANIN LANKARANI, The New York Times – December 9, 2009
Selim Mouzannar and Ranya Sarakbi had barely set up their stand at the Vendôme Luxury trade show in Paris in October before buyers started picking over the pieces.
Mr. Mouzannar and Ms. Sarakbi, jewelry designers from Beirut, were showing here for the first time, introducing fresh, high-quality collections that combined very limited series with one-of-a-kind creations.
Reactions to their work, shown in the Park Hyatt Hotel on Rue de la Paix, around the corner from the Place Vendôme, heart of the Paris Haute Joaillerie world, was encouraging, to say the least. “This is the first year we are showing our collection outside of Lebanon. The response has been extraordinary. We are amazed,” Mr. Mouzannar said.
“Selim and Ranya are part of a new generation of Lebanese artists that has focused attention on the creativity emanating from Lebanon,” said Laure d’Hauteville, a French art fair organizer and consultant based in Abu Dhabi.
Born in Beirut, Ms. Sarakbi and Mr. Mouzannar are both children of displacement and war who have joined forces to export their talents. Their business partnership is based on a shared desire to expand internationally beyond their Lebanese base.
If not for the bombings of Beirut during the 33-day siege in the summer of 2006 by Israeli forces, neither one might have thought about establishing a presence outside Lebanon.
“Life was normal. Suddenly, overnight, it became hell. We were hostages in our own land. The zones that were leveled were just a few miles away, and we could not move. The airport was bombed, the infrastructure destroyed,” Mr. Mouzannar said. “After that, I thought for the first time about establishing a base abroad.” The Paris show was a first step, to gauge European reactions, he said.
For an entire generation of Lebanese born in the 1960s and ’70s — like Mr. Mouzannar and Ms. Sarakbi — periods of relative calm and prosperity have always been punctuated by war.
When Mr. Mouzannar was 13, a 15-year civil war broke out. Following a period of reconstruction in the late 1990s, the military conflict three years ago between Hezbollah and Israel was a brutal reminder of the traumas of a life lived in fear and danger.
