All my adult life I have collected silver jewelry from the Middle East. It began in 1960, when I received a grant to spend the summer studying Arabic in Lebanon. From there I visited Damascus, and I went home with my first bracelet. Later, throughout a 30-year diplomatic career, I collected jewelry. At first it was just to wear, but as my husband, David, grew as interested in silver as I, we bought larger and more complex pieces. By 2000 we had accumulated a significant collection.

Silversmith Ali Muttahar al-Ma'amari, left, is among the new generation of silversmiths from al-Rujum, west of Sana'a. At right is his cousin, Walid al-Ma'amari.

Through forays to jewelry markets around the Mediterranean and throughout the Arabian Peninsula, I learned that the most intricate jewelry came from Yemen. I found good Yemeni pieces in Jiddah, Damascus, Cairo and, on rare occasions, in the us. As time went on, I focused my attention more and more on Yemeni silver, not only because of its unsurpassed craftsmanship, but also because, by the late 1990's, it looked as if this traditional craft might disappear.

This threat had its roots in the decline of both demand and supply. Gold had risen in value over the previous few decades, reducing the relative value of silver, and silver thus became too inexpensive to serve as a depository of family wealth, as it had for centuries. At the same time, even the idea of keeping wealth in such a form became old-fashioned as banks became more accessible. For those families who did retain some wealth in the form of jewelry, gold became the metal of choice, even if a family could afford only a piece or two. Lifestyles changed, too: Instead of receiving jewelry as wedding gifts, as was traditional, new couples often preferred appliances. And of the silversmiths, many of the most skilled had been Jews, and in the late 1940's and early 1950's, most of Yemen's Jewish population emigrated to Israel.

In the early 1990's, I began to lecture on Yemeni and Middle Eastern jewelry, and I arranged the exhibition "Silver Speaks: Traditional Jewelry of the Middle East" in 2004. After I addressed the Freer Gallery Seminar on Yemeni Culture in 2002, Abdul Karim al-Iryani, then a special advisor to the president of Yemen, encouraged me to research and write more on Yemeni jewelry. A year and a half later, thanks to research support from the American Institute for Yemeni Studies, I was on my way back to Yemen, and between 2005 and 2007, I spent about a year there.

That is when, to my delight, I found that a new, young generation of silversmiths had grown up. Despite the difficulties of low demand and, most recently, political turmoil, they are keeping the traditional craft of finely worked silver alive. I sought out and spoke with about 40 of them.

In particular, a group or "school" of young men from al-Rujum, north of Sana'a, had been receiving encouragement from their fathers to learn silversmithing. Silver was cheap, it seemed, so they could melt down their mistakes and resell the bullion without major losses. To a person, these young men are proud to be continuing one of their country's finest artisanal traditions—and willing to face a new, uniquely 21st-century, challenge: Sana'a markets are full of Chinese tin-and-plastic copies of Yemeni traditional jewelry.

There is, however, a market for their best work in Saudi Arabia. A fine hand-tooled sword of 85 percent silver might bring as much as $2500; a new woman's belt done in filigree might bring $1000. (A good antique one might fetch up to $3000.) A few families in Sana'a have purchased complete new sets of wedding jewelry in the traditional style. Tourists, when they come, buy the new work, too. But most of the silversmiths agree that, if these crafts are to thrive again, there will have to be more customers.

In Sana'a, the first silversmith I met was Ali Muttahar al-Ma'amari. I interviewed him as he worked in a tiny workshop in the back of his father's silver store. He was 22 and had just become a father himself. I sat in his cramped space, sipping tea and talking, and over the course of a day and a half, I videotaped him at work. He showed me how he does shadhraat (granulation), the technique of cutting fine pieces of silver wire and melting them over a steady flame until surface

Video by Marjorie Ransom

[+] Click here to download video above (28.1Mb).

UBI abdul-jawad

tension rolls them into perfectly round balls. He then solders these tiny spheres into small zuhras, or floral clusters, such as appear on the central medallion of the necklace right. This design is called badeehi, in honor of a family of Jewish silversmiths by that name who specialized in shadhraat.

As I met silver dealers and saw new jewelry I heard that a number of the young artisans hailed from the same part of north Yemen: al-Rujum, in the mountains of Mahwit province, west of Sana'a. Most of the al-Rujum silversmiths, I found, learned their craft from one master: Ibrahim al-Mahdi. Now in his late 70's, al-Mahdi trained with

Yemeni Jewish silversmiths. When I met him in 2005, he was fashioning swords and daggers for men. He had only one example of his work for women and he was willing to part with it. This upper-arm bracelet, called damlaj, was made for the women of the coffee-producing families of the mountains of Milhem in Mahwit province. It is one of my most treasured pieces.

When I met Nasir Nasir, a student of Ibrahim al-Mahdi, he was fashioning the "hut" ("whale") for the motif known as "hut wa zahr" ("whale and flower"), which was used extensively in northern Yemen for at least 200 years. It appears on bracelets and belts for women, like those at right, as well as on handles for men's daggers and knives. He also made the light, intricate bracelets below.

Nasir's brother Mohammed was also a student of al-Mahdi. I found Mohammed in Sana'a, too, working in a tiny space in the suq al-milh, or silver market. He showed me how he prepared beads and mazaamir, mace ends, for a necklace. He worked quickly and quietly in this workspace tucked away from the hustle and bustle of the bazaar. He outlined a shape in wire, and then filled the inside with the twisted wire filigree to form a leaf pattern for the end pieces. This work is called bowsani —again named after the Jewish family that perfected this filigree style.

When I interviewed him in 2006, he was 22, as highly skilled as he was generous and gentle. Tragically, he died two years later. This necklace, right, will always carry my memory of him.

Abdullah al-Jalal has a workshop in his house in the suburbs of Sana'a. Before I could interview him, he insisted that I share a meal with him and his family. After this delicious repast, he showed me a bracelet he had made using the "hut wa zahr" motif. He braced it on the masdaqa, or doming block, that silversmiths use for shaping beads. To do the intricate filigree that you see on the partly finished belt below, he uses a traditional majarra, or drawplate, to reduce silver wire to the fine size required.

Bakil Ahmed Muttaher Ja'alal is the last of the Rujum silversmiths I interviewed. When I met him, he gave me this lovely ring. Unlike the other Rujum young men who work alone, Bakil trains others in his workshop. He is devoted to the production of quality items, and he has the confidence to sign his pieces.

South of Sana'a in Taiz, Yemen's largest city, I found the second-largest silver-making center largely dominated by offspring of Yemen's largest silver-making family today—the Arifis. Abdullah Ismail al-Arifi was 31 when I interviewed him, and he had learned to work silver from his grandfather. In fact, he said, his ancestors back "seven to eight generations at least" had all worked in silver. He developed a business using the sham'i, or lost-wax, method, with which he created replicas of traditional silver jewelry, and he was training four or five workers. He made these beads, which replicate the traditional takhrim, or cutout,

style (openwork) of the coastal city of Zaidiyya, where there is today only one full-time silversmith remaining. Although silver made using the lost-wax method has less value than hand-tooled pieces, doing lost-wax work well nevertheless requires much skill, and when I first saw these beads, I could not tell they had been produced that way.

Abdul-Fatah Ismail al-Arifi, a younger brother of Abdullah, began working in silver when he was 16, and he was 24 when I visited him. He added that other al-Arifis work gold in Jiddah, and that his own immediate family had come to Taiz generations ago from the village of Bani Arifi in Wasab Safil, a remote mountainous area southwest of Sana'a. Each of the two lost-wax jambiya scabbards shown here took a week to complete, he said. He takes pride in his lost-wax skill: He had me compare the fine old mahfaza—a small coin holder mounted on the belt of a jambiya—at top in the picture at top, with his lost-wax replica, below.

I have a special fondness for the simplicity and clarity of designs from Zaidiyya near the Red Sea. I had found three antique pieces—the

center crescent and the two darker rectangles at right—and I wanted to have new pieces made to complete what would then be a restored original. Although I had doubts I could find a silversmith who could match the antique work, Mahboob Ghalib Amri of Taiz did just that. Unlike the other young silversmiths in that city, he is the first in his family to work this metal. He was 30 in 2006 and had been working silver for 10 years. He prepared the missing pieces, and now this lovely "Zaidi" necklace is symbolic of Yemeni silversmithing itself—part rich past, part young and promising present, yet all of one piece, enduring.

Collector, curator and writer Marjorie Ransom (maransom@verizon.net) first showed her collection of traditional Middle Eastern silver jewelry in 2003 in Washington, D.C. It has since appeared in solo and group shows in New York, San Diego and at the Arab American Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. A book, Silver Treasures from the Land of Sheba, has been accepted by the American University in Cairo Press.