Kufic Coin with Lapis Earrings

Silver and lapis

Elegant earrings inspired by the Kufic calligraphy style of ancient writings on the walls of buildings found in the region.

The Kufic script is a style of Arabic script that gained prominence early on as an architectural decoration, and it has since become a reference and an archetype for a number of other Arabic scripts.

It developed from the Arabic alphabet in the city of Kufa, from which its name is derived. Kufic is characterised by angular, rectilinear letterforms and its horizontal orientation. There are many different versions of Kufic, such as this one which is square Kufic.

Afghanistan was the source of lapis lazuli for the ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations, as well as the later Greeks and Romans.The best lapis lazuli is found in Badakhshan province in north-eastern Afghanistan and has been used for millennia in jewellery. The word lazuli is derived ultimately from the Persian lazhward, the name of a place where it was mined and which came to be associated with the stone and, eventually, with its colour.