Nada Debs, photo by Yasmina Hilal



by Benjamin Genocchio



“24 years ago when I came back here to Lebanon everyone said to me ‘Nobody likes crafted objects in the Middle East,’ laughs Nada Debs, the superstar Middle Eastern designer. 


Coming from Japan, where she experienced its ancient appreciation for handcrafted works and reverence for true master craftsmen, she was eager to explore Middle Eastern craft traditions. Her search led her to Damascus to see the famous mother-of-pearl inlay workshops. “It was so magnificent I said to myself, ‘I have to find a way to make all this appealing to our generation!’ So I asked the craftsman, ‘Can you do this work but more minimal, some pearl inlay triangles on a bedside table, a basic design? It was very zen. Then it all just took on a life of its own.”



Left: Coming To Life Side Table #2, 2022. Solid walnut and mother of pearl marquetry. Right: Gandhara Carapace #3, #2, and #1 Stool/Side Table, 2023. Lapis lazuli, amazonite and marble inlay.


Once Debs started blending traditional mother-of-pearl inlay with contemporary designs she realized there were many other traditional crafts in the Middle East she could incorporate in similar fusions, and each collection since is a study of a regional craft practice. She continues to create combinations of materials in contemporary design forms to reimagine and support these indigenous traditions, and in doing so, she and her artisans have become custodians of craft, preserving ancient knowledge while creating multicultural expressions with 21st-century appeal. The results are highly resonant, relevant, timeless objects ranging from her “Stitched Horizons” collection of six pebble chairs with curved back panels in intricate cane embroidery, produced by Palestinian embroiderers exiled in Lebanon, to intriguing juxtapositions of Middle Eastern parquetry and marquetry practices with playful contemporary forms in her “Coming to Life” collection.


Debs was born in Beirut but grew up in Japan before heading off to study design in the United States at the Rhode Island School of Design, then moving to London before eventually returning to Beirut. “I never felt I really belonged anywhere and in the end that became my greatest creative asset,” she says, sitting in her studio in an old residential building in the affluent Gemmayzeh district of Beirut that doubles as her showroom for clients. Here she leads a team of 20 designers engaged in everything from consumer home product and furniture design to one-off custom commissions, art, fashion, and jewelry, and a range of interior design services.


Above: Gandhara Carapace Bench, Coffee Table #2, and Stool/Side Table, 2023. Amazonite, onyx and marble inlay. Below: Gandhara Carapace Console, 2023. Lapis Lazuli and marble marquetry, Gandhara Carapace Coffee Table #1, 2023. Amazonite, lapis lazuli, and marble marquetry.



Galerie BSL (Paris) booth shot at Design Miami 2023, where the Gandhara Carapace collection was unveiled. Photo courtesy of Galerie BSL.


Today Debs is among the leading designers in the Middle East — she has won numerous awards and embarked on a series of collaborations ranging from limited-edition hand-carved and inlaid packaging for the luxury brand Dior to bespoke recycled material hand-crafted tiles for Kohler. “One could say that Nada is the Philippe Starck of the Near and Middle East,” says the legendary Parisian design dealer Béatrice Saint-Laurent, Galerie BSL, one of the first dealers outside of the region to fully understand the universal importance and value of Debs’s project of reviving and reinterpreting traditional craft in contemporary design. “I love her multicultural approach to design as well as contemporary language made of clear lines and bold patterns along with the unique talent she has for revisiting traditional ancestral crafts in a non-conformist and rebellious way,” Saint-Laurent says.


Debs’s latest “rebellious” collaboration takes inspiration from the blend of ideas and cultures characterizing the Buddhist statuary of the ancient kingdom of Gandhara in modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Gandhara Carapace Collection came out of a chance invitation from a traditional stone inlay business in Peshawar, Pakistan, Studio Lél, to design a line of contemporary furniture using the age-old craft ways, materials, processes, and techniques. “I was asked to give this a contemporary twist,” Debs says. Debs found immediate inspiration in the colorful narrative art, bells, and adornments that decorate local transport vehicles, sometimes called ‘jingle’ trucks because of the jingling sound they make.


Gallery vignette, Galerie BSL, Paris, from left: Coming To Life Side Table #2 and Coffee Table, 2022. Solid walnut and mother of pearl marquetry. Gandhara Carapace Table, 2022. Amazonite, onyx, and marble marquetry. Stitched Horizons Pebble Chairs in orange, pink, and yellow velvet with embroidery on straw.


“The human hand
is a voice, the artisan,
a storyteller.”

— Nada Debs



Debs reasoned that the vibrant colors of the Pakistani and Afghan marbles and other semi-precious stones traditionally used for inlay designs were perfectly suited to recreate the elaborate, colorful “truck” art of the Himalayas in the form of furniture. Though she initially wanted to work with ‘truck art’, which was prevalent in Peshawar, it didn’t have the high-end, luxury feel she wanted to achieve with the marble inlay. So rather than being very literal, she used the colorful adornments of the truck art as a base of inspiration. “What if, I thought, I take the beautiful colors of the truck art and distort them, make it feel like it’s pixelated so you don't see the actual designs, and only see a degradation of colors that represent the beautiful stones from the mountain areas of the Himalayas?”


The Gandhara Carapace Collection consists of tables, consoles, and chairs with simple, rounded forms covered completely in geometric mosaics crafted in the ancient art of “pietra dura.” Every work in the collection incorporates a “Carapace” polygonal marble motif that Debs explains is a “symbol of protection” made of semi-precious stones — lapis lazuli, amazonite, onyx, and malachite — and marble stones utilizing traditional stone inlay craft techniques. The combination of the minimal forms, vibrant colors, and rigorous geometric patterning results in a contemporary, playful look and feel — almost resembling a puzzle or paint-by-numbers in stone. The series is attributed as a collaboration between Nada Debs and Studio Lél as a sign of respect and acknowledgment of the artistry of the stonemasons in Pakistan and Afghanistan.



Nada was inspired by traditional Middle Eastern mother of pearl inlay furniture to create a contemporary collection honoring that heritage of craftsmanship. Coming To Life Coffee Table, 2022. Solid walnut, mother of pearl marquetry.


Debs was fortunate to find a sympathetic collaborator for the Gandhara Carapace Collection in Meher Asad, a graduate of the Pratt Institute in New York and artistic director of Studio Lél, which, Asad explains, “is committed to preserving and reinterpreting the art of Himalayan stone inlay.” "Very few designers have reinterpreted craft for the contemporary audience the way Nada has,” says Asad, “I can relate to her journey as a female designer." At the studio, Debs worked with the skilled craftsman, as well as “hands-on” scheming with all of the beautiful marbles and stones. “It's really an intricate craft that only a master craftsman can do," Debs says.


Everything that Debs produces is based on this one same philosophy: Through a process of respectful collaboration, she wants to draw attention to the rich history of fine craftsmanship in the Middle East while at the same time reinterpreting and reimagining these age-old processes, techniques, and materials to encourage new thinking or ideas about how people and cultures can adapt and grow. It is a message that has found resonance beyond the region: rave reviews from the design world greeted Saint-Laurent’s showings of the Gandhara Carapace Collection at PAD Paris and also Design Miami in 2023 as well as, the same year, “Rebellious Connections,” a solo show organized by Saint-Laurent for her gallery in Paris.


Coming to Life Console, 2022. Solid oak, mother of pearl marquetry. In this table, the organic wood top retains its natural state, contrasting with the contemporary form of the sloping, spiral legs adorned with mother-of-pearl inlay.


“She has so deeply experienced the aesthetic visions of different countries,” explains Saint-Laurent, who admires how Debs bridges cultures and eras, negotiating conflict and differences across borders and languages. But what most impresses Saint-Laurent is the way Debs enhances ancestral crafts through a contemporary perspective. “For Nada, as well as for me, design is not just about form and function. We also believe in objects that weave connections, establishing a bond with both the viewer and the user. Her creations draw value from the lines, materials, and craftsmanship employed, as well as from their intangible sensitive and spiritual side. These are objects with a soul; they are, in this sense, true works of art.”