Jewelry making and the Life of a Woman: Zeinab Khalifa

By Ginan Rauf

Zeinab Khalifa began her professional career as an apprentice to traditional master silversmiths and jewelers in Khan al Khalili, the heart of historical Cairo. In 1990 she began exhibiting her single edition pieces. By 1997 Khalifa had begun exhibiting more conceptual art pieces- she is currently involved in both contemporary installation art and jewellery. Her work has been acquired by various private and institutional collections in America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Zeinab Khalifa lives and works in Cairo. She runs her own gallery and workshop in Heliopolis Cairo.

GR: Please describe for us your concept or understanding of jewellery.

ZK: It is important to understand that in various Middle Eastern cultures jewelry is not merely an accessory or a decorative artifact. It has traditionally played an important role in women’s lives. A woman’s jewellery is part of her dowry or mahr; it is considered a woman’s capital. Families, for instance, might start buying gold for their daughters at a very young age and then sell it to finance the gihaz, the furnishings and trousseau purchased for a young bride at the time of marriage. The expectation is that the price of gold will go up in the future and that is one way to invest in the lives of young daughters. There is a kind of fluidity here. Jewelry can always be converted back into money and in that respect it provides women with a certain amount of security or amana. It is something of an insurance policy for hard times. Jewelry, then, is not an accessory; on the contrary, it is integrated into life.

GR: From what you are saying it sounds like jewelry can be used to empower women economically. Is that the only function jewelry has?

ZK: Not at all! There are a number of other important functions. Blue stones such as turquoise can be worn to ward off the evil eye and protect the wearer from harm. Agate is associated with mental health and is regarded as a kind of protection from suffocating states of mind. It gives the wearer a sense of well-being or balanced repose. Then, of course, there are the amulets which were used to keep people safe from evil spirits; I remember seeing women wear something called hijab al ras over their head scarves. These were sometimes rectangular in shape and contained a hollow space for Qur’anic verses that were assumed to provide the wearer with protection. So you see jewelry is not merely an accessory but is part of a larger belief system. Women who have just given birth wear a special kind of necklace made exclusively of agate with a larger heart shaped piece set in the center. It is called a mushahara; this necklace is believed to protect the mother from future infertility.

GR: Could you talk to us about some of the social functions associated with jewelry as well?

ZK: A woman’s jewelry functions as a kind of identity marker; it conveys to others who a woman is and where she comes from. Certain types of kirdans or multi-layered necklaces made of silver and gold, for instance, were associated with specific regions. Each region had a distinct design. Jewelry, then, is like a language communicating something specific about the wearer; a bejeweled woman or mitsiyaga projects an image of power within certain contexts.

Let me give you an example. I grew up around many traditional craftsman and merchants. That was my milieu and in my neighborhood there were women merchants who owned coffee shops; these women wore gold bracelets, chains, earrings and rings. This gave them a certain standing or makana; it conveyed a certain credibility to the other merchants and established the identity of the wearer as someone capable of paying for goods, of repaying loans. In short, this was a woman of her word or sahbat kalmia and could be trusted to live up to her financial obligations; sahbat kalmia and it meant that she was someone with whom one could enter into trade relations.

The image of one particular coffee owner comes to mind; she used to stand at the cashier in the center of the coffee shop managing all the waiters who worked for her. Sometimes she’d put her gold adorned arms on her hips in a gesture that signaled mastery and social status. It was as if she were saying I am a woman of property or sahbat mal and am a force to be reckoned with. I have therefore always associated big bulky jewelry with strong women who have real presence.

GR: From this I gather that your own mother must have also worn much jewelry. I mean if this is the milieu you grew up in. You seemed to have been influenced by such women and your jewelry is quite sizable and daring.

ZK: Well, my mother’s situation different. She wasn’t a merchant herself but the wife of a man who traded in wholesale food. There is an important distinction to be made here; my mother wasn’t out there on the street doing business with male merchants.

So she didn’t need to establish her status as a woman of property; it was pretty much understood that the household in its entirety contained people of property or ashab mal. As the wife of a well to do merchant she derived her status from something altogether different and that difference was reflected in the way she wore her jewelry.

My mother used to wear a chain with a big gold Qur’an or mushaf and a pair of earrings; this imbued her with a certain amount of piety and respectability. She had no need to display jewelry as weight. I think it contributed to her social standing or makana, giving her poise.

You see it fell to her to manage a busy household that was something of a way station for an extended family network that hailed from a rural background. Relatives who needed to come to Cairo for any reason would naturally stay at our house and it was her responsibility to accommodate them with the hospitality befitting a wealthy merchant’s wife. She really managed a large network of people and lived at the crossroads of a rural urban world that required an incredible amount of poise. These constant comings and goings meant that I was always exposed to a variety of different people during my childhood. Relatives often came to buy jewelry from Cairo in preparation for weddings and this stimulated my visually.

I have clear memories of the darker skinned Nubian women wearing their gold jewelry and the beautiful contrast it made with their lovely skin; it made me love bold pieces and I think these early experiences have influenced my style.

GR: So how did jewelry play out in your adult life, I mean as a married woman?

ZK: Well there were always financial troubles. We were constantly short of money and I had come from a background where it was important to be mugamla. That really means being hospitable, giving people their due and exchanging gifts.

At the time I wasn’t working, just raising my kids and managing the household. Since I didn’t have a separate income I used to collect antique silver jewelry; there were unique pieces that I would combine to make interesting necklaces and give as presents to my women friends. People liked the designs; they found them quite remarkable, distinct. This exchange of gifts played an important role in expanding my own networks; the jewelry helped me bond with my female friends. At the same time I felt this surge of creative energy well up inside me but I was tormented by doubt; I wondered if I had real talent or whether it was all just an illusion.

I remember when I made my first five earrings. I didn’t have the courage to display them so I casually placed them between other pieces that had been strung together. Only one friend of mine- Eva Elias- knew that I had actually made them and she liked them so this process helped me validate my talent to myself.

GR: How did you make the transition from stringing pieces to actually making your own jewelry?

ZK: My kids had finally grown up and I was beginning to discover my own space; something inside me craved for autonomy. I was thirty nine years old and felt that my creative life was just beginning, the best years lay ahead. The idea of training as a professional jeweler at the hands of master craftsmen took a hold of me and I returned to the world I had grown up in. At that point I became an apprentice at a traditional warsha or workshop and trained with usta Mohammed Hassan.

Above all I wanted to be taken seriously so I invested my own money in the warsha and bought raw material on which to practice and sometimes to help usta Hassan market his own work. At every opportunity I would treat the workers to lunch and share their meals; such gestures gave me credibility; they could clearly see I was investing my money, time, energy, and passion in the art of jewelry making. I was trying to make them see how seriously I took their line of work. Usta Hassan taught me how to weld. The wiring techniques that I learned from him proved to be invaluable. After I trained in this warsha that specialized in chain making , I moved on to a traditional Arabic jewelry maker called Umm George; at his warsha I was taught how to turn raw material like silver sheets into objects such as rings or earrings.

We worked together for around two years before I made the transition to a larger scale warsha that had workers with multiple specialties; this warsha was infused with a collective ethos and it empowered to create bold designs because I could always depend on a specialized craftsman to correct me, to salvage that which seemed unsalvageable or impossible to achieve.

GR: Were there other women working in this male dominated trade?

ZK: Yes, there were but they weren’t actually involved in welding or in highly creative aspects of the trade. They were confined to mechanical tasks and preparing the materials for the more creative work that was then carried out by male workers. There was definitely a glass ceiling for women in that world.

GR: How do you envision the future for other women jewelry makers now that you have established a name for yourself and are running your own warsha?

ZK: Personally, I am very pressed for time and have few opportunities to pass on my skills or experiences to other jewelry makers. In my opinion there is a real need to establish functioning institutions that support the dissemination of this knowledge. Should be institutions be created, I would be more than willing to run workshops and train younger jewelry makers, men and women alike. The hope is that I can empower the younger generation as I have been empowered for in the final analysis artistic creation must into a life as a whole.