Three generations at one bench.
Fifty-two years in Amman. The house has moved twice, the family has grown by two generations, and the setting bench is the same piece of walnut Zaid bought second-hand in 1974.
One bench on Rainbow Street
Zaid Yousef Awwad opens a two-metre workshop repairing gold for the neighbourhood. The first commission is a wedding band he sets in a single evening.
The second hand joins
His daughter Amal takes over the setting bench. She introduces pavé work, which nobody in the city was doing at that scale.
Abdoun
The house moves to Al Thaqafa Street, with the workshop behind the showroom rather than across town. Clients start watching their pieces being made.
Certification and the archive
Every stone above 0.30 carats is IGI certified, and the family archive of 4,000 drawings is catalogued and reopened for commissions.
The third generation
Rana Awwad leads design. The bench is unchanged; the tools around it are not.
Set by hand, or not at all.
Casting is done in Amman, but every stone is set by hand at the bench behind the showroom. A pavé cuff takes eleven days: two to raise the beads, seven to seat 428 stones, two to polish away every trace of the work.
Nothing leaves without being worn for a day by the person who made it. That is how we find the edge that catches on cloth.
Craft and care“My grandfather could tell a stone’s weight by holding it. I cannot. But I can tell when a setting will fail in ten years, and that is the same skill in a different hand.”
