Nada Debs x Studio Lél

The ‘Gandhara Carapace’ collection illustrates Nada Debs' world-renowned multicultural approach to design, as well as her talent for revisiting fine crafts in a contemporary light. The collection was born from the collaboration between Nada Debs and Meher Asad, a graduate of the Pratt Institute in NYC and artistic director of Studio Lél, which for thirty years has been committed to preserving and re-interpreting the art of stone inlay. 

Nada Debs is world renowned for her collaborations with regional artisans, creating finely crafted furniture and objects that employ traditional processes to achieve multicultural expressions with 21^st century appeal. For her, craft is an ideal vehicle for uplifting communities, preserving ancient knowledge, and bringing people together across borders, timelines, and identities. It is an approach she calls “handmade and heartmade”, which draws on her own transcontinental experiences – from her upbringing in Japan and her training at the Rhode Island School of Design in the US, to her early career in the US and the UK. For the last two decades she has lived and worked in Lebanon, where her family is originally from, drawing inspiration from the places she has called home – Japan, the US, and the UK – to rejuvenate the craft traditions of the Middle East’s Levant region. In September 2023, the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris awarded her with the Design Grand Prix d'Honneur. 

Nada Debs’ work spans several scales and practices: from object and furniture design to one-off commissions in the fields of design, art, fashion, jewellery and interior design. With each project, she cleverly instills culture and craftsmanship in pieces imbued with emotional resonance that embody a human story and a sense of belonging. Indeed Nada Debs does not only believe in form and function. She values connections – to places, to others, and to our own identity in the wide world. The materials she chooses all tell a tactile story. For her, the human hand is a voice, and the artisan a storyteller. She describes craft as a skill that carries a memory, but also as a feeling that extends beyond geography, language and culture. As a result, her creative process combines ideas, skills and techniques gathered from her travels to form a unique cultural interaction. "My work is driven by a belief in the power of craft to cross time and boundaries and touch us on a primal level."

A multi-disciplinary artist and designer, artistic director of Studio Lél, Meher Asad is dedicated to perpetuating the legacy of the applied arts by infusing them with a contemporary aesthetic. She has brought Studio Lél, the artistic collective that her mother Farhana founded thirty years ago in Peshawar, Pakistan, to international recognition. In 2019, she received an award from the Gates Foundation. In 2023, she exhibited at Doppia Firma in Milan, Italy. At Studio Lél, the creative possibilities of stone inlay are further explored and updated by incorporating other techniques such as French eglomerate glass (gilding on glass), scagliola (plaster pouring), and cloisonné (enameling). The studio hosts local artisans as well as Afghan master craftsmen who have taken refuge in Pakistan, striving to preserve and pass on the knowledge and skills of this centuries-old art to future generations. 

The art of stone inlay or ‘pietra dura’ – also known as ‘parchin kari’ in South Asia – originated in the ancient Roman technique of opus sectile, which not only underwent a revival but reached the pinnacle of its development in the hands of the Florentines during the Italian Renaissance in the 16^th century. For them, this meticulous act of cutting and adjusting stones into intricate and exquisite forms was akin to painting – "painting in stone". In the following century, the art of pietra dura spread to Russia, Iran and across South Asia, to Afghanistan, India and Pakistan, under the patronage of the Mughals.