Pietre Dura - saving a dying art in Peshawar

Pietre Dura is a specialized decorative art, using cut and highly polished gem stones as inlay in hard stones like marble. The art form started in Italy, was supported by the Medicis' and gained a completely new home in Mughal architecture across the sub-continent. 

Bulbul Home's pietre dura collections are one-of-a-kind, and we do not plan to ever repeat our designs. We work with an amazing mom-daughter team to deliver our designs into physical products for the home. Meher and her mum have spent the last 11 years building a small workshop and team of extremely skilled artisans who together bring designs to life in awe-inspiring detail. 

Meher's team comprises of Afghan refugees and displaced persons around Peshawar, Pakistan - an ancient city close to the border with Afghanistan. Set around the Himalayan mountain range, Peshawar has access to some of the finest marbles and gemstones in the world. 

From there, we created a colour palette of gemstones that would come together to build our first collection - Lemon Series. Working on the base of individually sourced white Ziarat Marble, and Black Marbles, we created lemon motifs using Serpentine (which is also used as a healing stone), calcite, and stained onyx. Each piece is individually hand-cut and set it place like a jigsaw puzzle by the master craftsman.

Bulbul Home is proud to be the sole partner with Studio Lel in Australia and New Zealand, bringing something truly unique to Aussie homes. 

For more on Meher and her work, please visit her website at: https://studio-lel.com/