Beirut-Based Clara Chehab Fine Jewellery Launches Colorful 18-Karat Gold “Gaia” Collection

“Gaia” is the name of Beirut-based designer Clara Chehab Fine Jewellery’s debut collection and true to its earthly name, this 18-karat gold range is alive with some of earth’s most precious materials and energies.

In sculpturally bold; colorful designs that express Chehab’s organically baroque yet elegant vision, ruggedly cut precious gems are juxtaposed with faceted colored stones and “sprinkled” with tiny diamonds, like icicles dripping from emerald green trees, or snowflakes flurrying over blue seas. As the Beirut-based designer explained in an email interview, “All of the pieces in “Gaia” are formed with uncut stones that are mixed with faceted gems. It is when I became a mother,” she continued, “that I felt drawn back to Mother Earth, who the Greeks named “Gaia”, and I began designing with a large array of colorful raw and faceted colored gemstones, plus small diamonds.” Gaia is available from London-based Objet d’Emotion

Emotionally Impactful Jewels With Feminine Power

Jewels in the “Gaia” range suit daytime as well as evening wear, and in their wild beauty they embody silhouettes reminiscent of those by the late designer Tony Duquette. While Chehab’s jewels are far less flamboyant than Duquette’s creations, which are comparatively larger in scale, their intriguingly varied, refined and rugged contours make similarly powerful visual impacts.

As Chehab recounted, “As a designer, my goal is to express emotion and artistry through the pieces I create. I want those who wear them to feel powerful and connected to earth energies and the beauty that lives within their minds and bodies. My intention,” she continued, “is to create timeless and romantic designs that spark confidence, the love of Nature and the experience of serenity.”

Each Design A Story Illustrated by Colored Gemstones

Containing intensely colorful rubies, aquamarines, tourmalines or sapphires that dazzle with tiny round brilliant cut diamonds against a backdrop of different 18-karat gold alloys, each of Chehab’s designs tells a tale about the colors, volumes, textures and energies of gemstones. As she related, “There are many tourmalines in the “Gaia” collection. A painterly gem owing to its unusual chromatic range, tourmaline comes in all the colors of the rainbow, plus black and even colorless hues.” Some types of tourmaline tell intriguing color stories, Chehab detailed. “Tourmaline can embody two or three distinct zones of color— all in the same piece of rough material. Tourmaline,” she added, “conveys different meanings and symbolizes different concepts in various cultures. “For some,” she recounted, “tourmaline is the stone of self-love and compassion, while others believe tourmaline contains the power to heal and protect the wearer.”

Female Relatives Shaped Her Jewelry Vision

Many innovative and impassioned jewelry designers come from families who treasure jewelry as adornment, personal expression, talismans, heirlooms or emblems of identity. Beirut-based Chehab came from one such family. As she explained “My mother, grandmother and great-grandparents all valued jewelry for its design, artistic originality, materials, artisanship and emotional symbolism.” Chehab absorbed their nuanced appreciation for jewelry, which in turn shaped her vision and the design of her “Gaia” collection. “I grew to feel the same way about jewelry as my feminine elders did, but now I also design jewelry because of my love of the primal energies within colored gemstones and because of their geological age.”

Chehab’s earliest jewelry-related memory involves a fateful trip to her grandmother’s private jeweler when she was about six years old. As she recalled, “My grandmother took me to a friend of hers who was a private jeweler. She had brought an old European cut diamond Toi et Moi ring given to her by her parents, and she asked the jeweler to convert the diamonds in the ring into earrings so that she could give them to me for my first communion.” These diamonds that the jeweler converted into my earrings held intense emotional value then, and perhaps they hold even more today. “It is as if I am wearing my grandmother’s love and her parents’ love,” she ventured.

Chehab recollected, ““My passion for jewelry started very early with my grandmother but I would say my mother instilled in me the love of colored stones. My mother wore jewelry every day, so it became normal for me to wear pieces every day, as well. I feel naked now if I don’t have a ring and a pendant on. As a young girl,” she continued, “I always dreamt of working with jewelry. My passion was fueled by those early experiences of visiting the goldsmith.” While Chehab often received a ring or necklace on her birthday from her parents, jewelry always meant far more to her than mere adornment. “Jewelry making and jewelry giving traditions also fostered my appreciation and love for jewels that evoke memories, that reinforce familial bonds and deepen emotions,” she noted.

Handmade In Beirut By Third And Fourth Generation Artisans

Before becoming a jewelry designer, Chehab worked in investment banking and wealth management for 10 years in London. After leaving London’s corporate banking world, she returned to live in Beirut, where, as she testified, “I could no longer resist my passion for jewelry and my desire to create it, so I took a leap” and started conceptualizing the “Gaia” collection.

The first jewelry design Chehab ever created was a ring for her mother. “Since she loved multi-colored and big statement pieces, I created a bombée ring filled with multi-colored tourmaline cabochons,” Chehab wrote. Proud of her Lebanese heritage and of Beirut’s ancient jewelry making traditions, Chehab supports her country’s cultural legacy by employing local artisans rather than fabricating her jewels in countries where labor is less expensive. “Clara Chehab Fine Jewellery employs a group of third- and fourth-generation artisans in Beirut,” the designer explained. “The Beirut jewelers I work with possess techniques and skills that have been passed down from generation to generation. Indeed, the intangible cultural heritage of Chehab’s master jewelers literally sets her gemstones to their ultimate advantage and transmutes her designs into enduring jewelry. “By working with Beirut gemstone setters, master jewelers, polishers and other artisans,” she explained, “I am investing in the local community and providing work for those affected by the trying economic times in Lebanon.”

When asked to summarize what elements most characterize her jewelry, Chehab replied, “Strong stones, soft designs and rich, joyful colors. These all harmonize in pieces that are sensual and dramatically unique, yet they epitomize femininity. More than anything,” she wrote, “I hope clients will see and feel life and love embodied in each piece I create.”