Interview: Artist Maya Abdulaal weaves culture into metal

Artist and gemologist Maya Abdulaal moved from Damascus, Syria to New York City in 2013. She brought with her little but her life savings and a love for making jewelry. After rising quickly in the world of jewelry and gemology, she launched her own brand, weaving her background and heritage into beautiful pieces. 

Hayat spoke with Abdulaal about her journey as an artist, and how she molds metal and gemstones into intricate pieces layered with meaning. 

Thanks so much for talking with us. Could you tell us a little about yourself and your journey to where you are now?

Oh wow, what a journey. I was born in Damascus, Syria and lived most of my life there, traveled, saw the world. I loved the cultures, everybody around me. In Syria there have been a lot of problems lately, in the last ten years. So back home, I wondered if I would ever leave, but when the wars started I realized that was the time for me.  

But before I made my decision, I double majored in Sculpture and Graphic Design back home. I come from a very artistic family. My dad worked a little bit in architecture but then he did fashion design for most of his life. I remember him cutting all these dresses and all the beautiful, beautiful pieces on the dining room table. My sister is also a fashion designer.  

But I couldn’t relate. My dad thought I would also be interested in that, but I couldn’t relate to the material, the fabric material is just very weak for me. I like metal, I like stone. But back home there was no jewelry school at all, this industry was just like father to son, only in the family kind of business so it was hard for me to learn. I was like ’nope, I need to travel’. 

Then the wars started, and it was very brutal on everyone around there. I decided to leave. When I came here, it was 2013, and I’d already called GIH (Gemological Institute of America), I’d already emailed them and Studio Jewelers. I had everything that I’d saved my entire life, everything that I owned I invested in myself. I needed to do what I want to do.  

After I graduated from GIA, I did bench jewelry for a year, and took a jewelry design course as well. And then I started having an internship with a great jeweler. After that I started working with a well-known company, Diamonds International. I’ve been working with them for the past 8 years. I started with them as just a gemologist, a designer, and I got promoted several times and now, thank God, I am their Creative Director.

Congratulations! 

Thank you! So yeah, it’s been a real roller coaster, it’s been crazy. But that’s life, you know?  

Yeah, so you really hit the ground running. 

Yeah, for me…there’s no excuse for me to fail, there’s no way for me to fail. Because there’s no going back home. So I had to make that happen, and I just kept on going.  

The first moment I realized I wanted to do jewelry, I was traveling in Lebanon with a family, and I saw these enamel pieces that were very, very interesting. And I was like ‘oh, this is like graphics, on jewelry’ because of my background in graphic design. So I was like ‘why am I not doing this, with the material that I love?’ 

I made a couple of pieces there, and then when I came here I was like ‘yep, this is it.’ I also started my own brand. In this industry, you learn how to do for the masses. Everybody craves this simple piece, something to wear everyday. But also, when I started to do statement pieces that spoke a lot about me and my background, that’s when I started hearing comments like ‘wow, these are really amazing pieces, tell us more’.  

Yes, everyone wants to wear this simple piece in jewelry, but people are also interested when they see a piece with an inspiration and a background. So that gave me the platform to talk about my background as a person who came from the Middle East and made it in New York. And making it in New York is really very difficult. 

I’ve heard that, yeah.  

It’s been a journey. Now, I partnered up with two of my very close friends also in the industry and we’re launching our own line in less than a month. So we’re very excited. The brand name is going to be called Fused Fine Jewelry, because we’re three girls from three different backgrounds coming together. Just like we’d fuse a piece of jewelry, metal and all kinds of other materials, we’re also fused from different cultures and backgrounds.

 

Are those pieces also a mix of more simple pieces, and more meaningful statement pieces? 

Yes, to establish ourselves and far from one culture, which is me or my friends individually, we’re going to do the simple pieces for the masses. But then we’re going to start putting more cultural stuff and more folklore stuff and tell a story about it. We’re already working on the collection, it’s going to be called the ‘relic’ collection. 

Could you tell us a little bit more about a particular style or element you include in your jewelry, and what really lies behind it? 

I have two pieces that I really love. The first one is the feather cuff, I called it the Phoenix. Just having a very bad day, contemplating ‘what the Hell did I do? Am I in the right place? Is this it for me, is this the life for me?’ So I started on the legend of the phoenix, rising from the ashes. I wanted to show the world how everyone can hit rock bottom, everybody can have bad days, but we just can’t give up on our dreams, our lives, what we want to accomplish. Again, for me there was no way of going back. This is it. So that’s a very special piece to my heart.  

The second piece that I absolutely adore is called Bayt. ‘Bayt’ in Arabic means ‘home’. Back home we have these different kinds of textiles. Each village, each city has its own kind of pattern. I took a course in Anthropology and my professor took me to these villages. It was amazing to see these women wearing different types of dresses, and the way they knotted the dresses, the way they put the fabric and patterns together differs from one village to another, the colors, the material, everything.

The way he explained it to me is that when you see a woman wearing that dress with that style, pattern, color, you would know that she belongs to this village or city. And when you see another woman wearing another piece, you would recognize that pattern as well. But it doesn’t stop there; from the pattern, you would know that this woman is single, or divorced, or widowed.  

These things, it really stuck with me. So while I was here in NY, I asked a friend and my sister to literally scan these materials and these fabrics from this village and send me the pictures. I started carving these patterns from this fabric on a piece of silver.  

If you look at it, some of these patterns look like houses, like skylines. They look like a mosque or a church or a synagogue. It represents Damascus, because if you go downtown in Damascus you will see all religions and temples together in the same circle. A church here, a mosque here, and literally just one meter between them. And that’s what I wanted to see, to put in this piece and take from this pattern.  

I also included one shape which I include in all the pieces, and that’s the diamond shape. Arabic calligraphy was built from this. If you want to build any font, you have to start with the diamond. And it goes back also to the religion which is, there is only one start and it’s God, there’s nothing else. That’s why I had to put this diamond shape in all the pieces, to present my background, like tiny little homes around your finger or your wrist. I wanted to represent home with these textiles. 

It’s amazing how many layers of meaning just one piece can have. Thank you so much for joining us Maya. 

Of course!  

 

Check out Maya Abdulaal’s recent launch, Fused Fine Jewelry, here.