Almost all jewelers spend their time making jewelry. Almost. Some, like Selim Mouzannar, also engage in civil battles. The Beirut-based jeweler, in fact, is part of the Executive Committee of Achrafieh2020, a citizen-led environmental initiative to reinvent the Lebanese city’s historic Ashrafieh neighborhood as a sustainable and liveable space. Furthermore, he is one of the founders of Right to Nonviolence, an NGO engaged in legal activism and defense. Mouzannar, tells his biography, was involved in the non-violent revolution of the cedars of 2005 which forced the Syrian army to leave Lebanon.
But, of course, his main activity remains that of jewelry. He comes from a family of artisans originally from Damascus, and learned the art of working precious metals and gems in his father’s jewelry in the souk of Beirut, during the heyday of the cosmopolitan city. In 1980, during the civil war, Mouzannar went to study in Paris, where he graduated in mineralogy and gemology. He then worked for a jeweler based in Saudi Arabia and he moved to Bangkok, Thailand, where he dealt with gems.
In 1990 Mouzannar returned to Paris, where he acquired further skills in mineralogy from the Institut National de Gemmologie. Finally, he opened his Maison in Beirut, and in 2012 received a certification in Jewelry Design from the GIA Gemological Institute of America, followed by a certificate from the École supérieure des affaires (Beirut) Lebanon) in Marketing De Luxe in 2014. The jeweler is known for his crafting technique, known as Falamenk (means Flemish in Arabic), which combines rose-cut diamonds and silver-backed bezels.
