Our Story
In the chickpea-scented kitchen of an immigrant apartment in Queens, Veya, 8, wraps pieces of copper scavenged from construction sites with the French gold thread her mother used to embroider her wedding dress. Her Syrian father polishes the movement of an antique pocket watch at the dining room table, humming the Aleppo ballad, “We can't take the land with us when we go into exile, but the stars will be sewn into the skirts.”
Twenty years later, this bloodline of Damascus roses and Parisian Tower moonlight has given birth to Veyajewels in Brooklyn's Dumbo Arts District - the first light luxury jewelry brand to fuse Middle Eastern metalwork, European Deco, and the spirit of the American street.
The daughter of a seamstress and the grandson of a watchmaker, Veya understands the survival skills of immigrant women: her mother sewed evening gowns out of scraps, her grandfather forged wedding headdresses out of shell casings in a refugee camp. Today, she infuses this “sparkle in the rubble” philosophy into every piece - casting latches from reclaimed brass Statue of Liberty repair parts, remelting cast-iron railings from demolished buildings in Manhattan to make ring bearings, and hiring women from Yemeni refugee camps to weave tassels of gold wire.
“The real American dream is not to start from scratch, but to have cultural genes from different continents photosynthesize here.” In the Veyajewels studio, artisans from 12 countries are melting down and recreating heirlooms provided by clients: a silver thimble from a Guatemalan grandmother becomes a skyscraper silhouette pendant, and a mother-of-pearl hairpin from a Japanese bride is deconstructed into star-spangled cufflinks. With our customized “Nomadic Heirlooms” collection, each immigrant story finds a physical vehicle.
When a new client opens a recycled jewelry box made from old Brooklyn newspapers, they will find a hot-stamped declaration etched into the lining, “You don't have to choose between roots and wings.” These are the exact words that Veya's father wrote on the back of his arrival card when he landed on Ellis Island in 1983.