Made by Hand, with So Much Patience
Damascus Box began with a walk through the old workshops of Damascus. Yazan Krayem wanted to build something of his own, and this idea did three things at once: it helped people back home, it kept a dying craft alive a little longer, and it made him an entrepreneur. So he went, with his own father beside him, from workshop to workshop, meeting the craftsmen who still make this by hand.
Yazan in the courtyard of Azm Palace, Damascus, September 2025.
"The joy was sitting with them and listening," Yazan says. "It's a story." What stayed with him was harder to shake: the men doing this work are old, and there are fewer of them every year. That's why every piece matters.
Abu Boutros: Ninety Years at the Workbench
Gabriel Al-Dayeh, known to everyone as Abu Boutros, is ninety years old and has worked this craft for more than seventy-five of them. He was fifteen when his father pulled him out of school. "You'll work with me," he told him. That was the early 1950s, and he never left the trade.
He still works the old way: walnut, lemon wood, rosewood, eucalyptus and beech, cut into thin rods, bundled into stars and diamonds, sliced and reassembled by hand until the pattern appears. "Everything we do is by hand," he says. "Every part becomes a piece of something bigger, like life itself, built little by little."
He worries about who comes after him. "We are the last generation," he says. "But what we've made will stay: every box, every line tells a story."
Abu Kamal: Carrying the Craft Forward
Mohammad Tarek Al-Dahh, known as Abu Kamal, was born in 1991 in Al Shaghour, one of the oldest quarters of Damascus. He grew up around the scent of wood and the shimmer of mother of pearl, and today he runs his own workshop behind the markets of the Old City, trained by Elias Shamoun, one of the city's respected masters.
"Every piece we make tells the story of Damascus," he says. "It carries a part of our spirit." His work follows the same geometry his teachers passed down, made new in his own hand. "This craft is threatened," he says, "but as long as people love their heritage, it won't disappear."
Abu Boutros and Abu Kamal each work alone, in separate workshops, a generation apart in age but bound by the same patience and the same geometry.
In Damascus
Khan As'ad Pasha, Damascus.
What We Do
Inlaid panels being laid out by hand on the workbench.
Every piece is bought directly from these craftsmen, no middlemen. Each one is made by hand, so no two pieces are exactly alike, and ships with a numbered certificate of authenticity. Founded in Berlin in 2025, we ship across Europe and worldwide.
Made by hand, with so much patience. That's the whole idea.