ENTITRE : Damask Rowsary - when all subsides, ornaments remain
The DAMASK ROWSARY piece embodies resilience and softness.
Japanese cultured pearls
As we celebrate Japan and the beauty of Spring under the Cherry Blossoms, let us tell you the story behind our Damask Rowsary necklace made of Japanese cultured pearls with a rosy luster resembling the delicate fleeting petals of the SAKURA.
We stumbled upon these pearls a few years ago and discovered that they dated back to the 1960s and had come from a Japanese marine pearl cultivation. Their distinctively small size (2mm in diameter), round shape and incredible luminousness is hard to come by in this day and age. Time has enhanced their beauty and the idea of pairing them with a falamank cross in a modern choker design soon became evident. Our intention was to magnify the purity of the pearls with the singular glow of rose-cut diamonds to create a soft and meaningful piece for all generations to wear.
A Palace in Beirut on March 10th 2021, 7 months after the Port explosion. These intricate ornamental marble stands held out against the blast.
Our MMXX Sterling Silver ring marks the year of our launch and the start of the pandemic year, one that will go down in history.
MMXX a year to be remembered
Following Smart ESA’s start-up acceleration programme in Beirut, we launched LWJ in the middle of the MMXX pandemic year with the belief that when everything is destroyed what remains is the material, the artifact, the ornament.
Like archeologists study ancient civilisations through the physical remains of their past human activity, from tombs, to manuscripts and talismans - at LWJ we believe in the importance of ornaments in our daily lives, as they provide historical proof of our time on earth. When all subsides, ornemants remain and tell our story for us.
After a year of the Great Global Lockdown, the spread of an unknown disease, on and off confinements and restrictions and one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in Beirut; the need for justice, hope and reassurance has never been so shared.
We designed our Damask Rosary with the intention of bringing together what we find most compelling about the East and the West, the Turkish-Syrian rose-cut diamond setting technique “falamank” with the Western latin symbol of the cross and modern choker design; however following the Beirut blast and the emergence of a global pandemic, the necklace took on an even larger symbolic, one of hope and unity, inspired by the figure of the Virgin Mary - that from darkness stems the light.
Virgin Mary : the Mystical Rosary
Our Damask Rowsary alludes to the power of the Mystical Rose. When in Beirut, one cannot help but notice the number of statues of the Virgin Mary nestled on every street corner, like a reassuring ornament amongst the chaos. The picture on the left shows walls of a house in the aftermath of the Port explosion. The windows are shattered, but the figure of the Virgin Mary was left untouched. A light at the end of the tunnel.
Selecting rose-cut diamonds for our falamank pieces including the Damask Rowsary necklace which flawlessly blends the rose-cut diamond's delicate glow alongside the Japanese cultured pearl’s soft luster. Our Damask Rowsary can be custom-made to your neck size, get in touch at care@lwjjwl.eu for more information.
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