From information systems manager and cybertech solutions to successful, award-winning jeweler. It is the unusual story of Tariq Riaz, a designer and jeweler based in Abu Dhabi. «I am a free man. I love what I do and I do what I love ”, he summarizes. It certainly represents an exception. Riaz says that the turning point in his life came in 2014, when he was unable to find a ring that his pregnant wife could wear during and after pregnancy, that is, in two different sizes. He then decided to apply his engineering skills to jewelry. In short, more than a passion for luxury, it was technical curiosity that pushed Tariq Riaz.
But then he followed the Gia courses, went to Belgium, Germany, Afghanistan and Pakistan to learn goldsmith techniques and to buy precious stones. The first collection, consisting of 21 pieces in pavé on platinum, took three and a half years of work. And the work between precious metals and gems gave birth to the new passion for jewelry. In 2020 he entered the first jewelry prize competition with the American Gem Traders Association Spectrum Awards. He immediately won two awards. And his fame took off.
Inside him, however, the passion for science has not disappeared. For example, he recounts the fascination of the properties of reflection and refraction of light and the fundamental property of matter and elementary particles of quantum physics, which appear both as a wave and as a particle based on the presence or absence of an observer. From these reflections the Abrazo was born, a word that means embrace in Spanish and indicates a technique that allows the rings to adapt to the wearer’s fingers.
92 diamanti, tsavoriti, tecnica Abrazo
smeraldi, turchesi
