Hiiiii, my name is Sayran and I started my jewelry journey in 2015 and launched my very first collection in February 2016. It started out as me sketching pieces of jewelry I wish I owned that were nowhere to be found in any market or shop. Most of the evil eye or symbolic SWANA inspired jewelry I was seeing at the time were very traditional styles of the evil eye (and even those were hard to find at the time) and I wanted something that felt like a mix of both my Kurdish roots but also my diaspora upbringing. I really wanted to create something I wish I had growing up, especially in diaspora where I never felt enough of either identity, so I made something that felt whole.
Fast forward 8 years later and I am really grateful to be able to create and watch my work bloom in ways I only dreamed of….but even then as a 90s kid I never dreamed it was possible for a Kurdish girly to have the access to do something like create jewelry and gems rooted in the culture I adored so much. My work is an ode to our roots.
My name means picnic in Kurdish and is usually a place where community gathers with food and music and joy, to celebrate any and everything or to just be with loved ones. It was one of my favorite things we did when we were kids. We used to go to parks in Dallas with family and friends and eat Kurdish food and listen to Kurdish music, watch the adults do traditional dances, a way to remember our roots, even tho we were far from the homeland. I say that because one of my most cherished parts of doing any of this is the community I have come to know. Through adornment so many of us have connected and found similiarities between our cultures and homelands and with that so much acceptance love and care towards each other that little me truly dreamed of. Community in good and in bad times makes the biggest difference. Through art and culture and our histories we are connected.