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A group of young Cambodian designers are putting a modern twist on their rich history.

by Bronwyn Sloan

Bracelets (above and top) in silver and precious stones from the artists of Rajana. Photos by Murray Wray. Top Left: An enigmatic stone smiling face from Angkor Wat. Photo © Terra Galleria Photography.

It is early in the morning, but the four young silversmiths of Rajana are already at work under the watchful eye of their boss, Chhoeun Vuthy Seng. He himself is a designer turned supervisor, trainer, and surrogate father to his youthful charges.

One is an orphan, another a former refugee. Most have lost at least one parent to war or disease. None of them could read their own language, let alone speak English, before they came to this tiny workshop, where temperatures top 100 degrees Fahrenheit every day under the corrugated iron roof.

They all have one other thing in common — they love their work, and they are proud to be recognized as some of the finest young designers to emerge from this impoverished little Southeast Asian nation. Cambodia once exported its rich veins of gems to finance a 30-year-long civil war, but is now turning out its own unique pieces for export to the United States and Europe.

The designers at work in their upstairs workshop. Photo by Murray Wray.

“We use some African gems, but mostly we use Cambodian stones, because we have so many beautiful gems here, and we want to promote our country,” Seng says.

From the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin in the country’s far west, come ruby and sapphire. From the remote mountain province of Rattanakiri in the northeast come amethyst and blue zircon “the color of the sky.”

Rajana — a name which means “to make something beautiful and interesting” — started life as a small skill-building operation of the Christian non-government organization Southeast Asian Outreach. It’s now independent, and the jewelers are working for themselves.

Bracelet in silver and precious stones by the artists of Rajana. Photo by Murray Wray.

They create their silver jewelry in a very basic rooftop workshop, and their products are sold in the store downstairs.

On the store wall, a sign proclaims, “Rajana believes that Cambodia’s rich tradition can continue to inspire beautiful and original art and craft works, while also giving potentially vulnerable Cambodians a secure income and a means to provide for themselves and their families.”

It is a creed these men live by.

“At first we had no experience, and we didn’t know what the foreigners liked,” says Thoeun Chantha, 21, who has been with Rajana for five years. Most of the customers in the shop are foreign tourists, although they have some larger contracts overseas, mainly with Christian groups.

“As we became more experienced, we started to experiment,” Chantha continues. “At first we looked at old catalogs and changed designs we saw there so they were unique to us. But as we worked, we came up with more and more of our own designs that are Cambodian, like us, but that foreigners love, too.”

The last of the Khmer Rouge troops were defeated or had defected to the government by 1998. Cambodia now, finally, has peace, providing a fertile ground for its youth to follow their dreams of free enterprise.

“I was lucky,” Chantha says. “I come from Pursat province, which is famous for its marble carving, not gems, but I used to make earrings when I was small just for my own interest. I met my old boss when I was still very young, and he said I would be a good designer and brought me here so I could study more.”

The Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Photo © Terra Galleria Photography.

His story is typical of the success stories of Rajana, which was set up to give impoverished Cambodian youths a chance for an education and a vocation they could never have gotten by themselves.

To one side of the tiny workshop, Heang Soheanith, 21, is working on a ring of his own design, based on a wall hanging from the Bantey Srey, or Citadel of the Women, a temple in Cambodia’s magnificent Angkor Wat temple complex. He spent 12 years of his life in a refugee camp in neighboring Thailand, but he returned home in 1993. He’s fiercely proud to be Khmer and to have the opportunity to promote his ancient culture.

“Cambodia has many beautiful gems, and we buy our silver from Singapore to be the best quality and to show them to their best [advantage],” he says.

Two Buddhist monks examine bas-reliefs in Angkor Wat, the inspiration for Rajana's designs. Photo © Terra Galleria Photography.

Their Ankor Wat-inspired designs are taken from “temple rubbings” — placing a piece of paper over a certain design of a temple’s stone carvings and rubbing over it with charcoal or graphite — and are often as simple as a single leaf or flower pattern repeated and set with a single, brilliant gem at its center.

Bracelet in silver with a black star sapphire by the artists of Rajana. Photo by Murray Wray.

The ancient designs are simplified into modern, clean lines that highlight the stone but emphasize the flavor of Cambodia’s unique and ancient culture.

“We design from our minds. We see something, our minds show us how it should look when someone wears it, and then we turn it into jewelry with our hands,” Seng says. “In 1998, before we became independent, our boss sent us to Angkor and said, ‘All of you have to find a new design in the temples, and when you come back, if you can make it into jewelry, you get a bonus.’ We all came back with designs, and we made a lot of extra money because they were all good.”

Cambodian rubies and sapphires from Pailin are famous for their color and quality, and Rajana’s designers will often have the rough custom-cut to suit their unique designs.

“We don’t always want teardrop or heart cuts, and although we don’t cut our gems ourselves, we know what cut suits which stone best and what suits our particular design,” Seng says.

A ring in silver with moonstone. Photo by Murray Wray.

The Rajana designers want visitors to take a lasting example of Cambodia with them into their homes around the world, so they are very particular about their stones.

“We don’t like stones that have been artificially colored. Sometimes a stone needs to be cooked to have its color [like blue zircon], but we have suppliers we trust to tell us when this happens,” Seng explains. “Otherwise, we like to use stones as close to natural as possible. Pailin rubies and sapphires are beautiful by themselves. It is the cutting that is very important to show them as well as they can be.” However, he admits there are problems in the gem industry when buying local product.

“The rubies and sapphires from Pailin are running out. Rubies are different qualities, and for the best ones now, one carat can cost $25, $30, sometimes $50. For less perfect stones, especially sapphires, it is about $5 a carat, but for us to buy the best — the ones we prefer to work with — we need customers to order in advance. Otherwise, we spend a lot, so we have to charge the customer a lot, and it might sit on the shelf for months,” he says.

But while the money is important, it’s really the creative spark that drives these young men. “We do a lot of church orders for the U.S. or the U.K., and if we have a big order of small pieces, we might turn out 100 or even 200 in one month,” explains Seng. “But if we have time, we spend a lot more energy on creating new designs for bigger pieces like bracelets, and for us that is what makes the job so rewarding.”

Two young boys transport a Buddhist monk along Tonie Sap Lake to collect water from a stream in northwest Phnom Penh. Photo by Heng Sinith.

Christianity runs deep for these men, which is unusual in a country that is 95 percent Buddhist. The shop has a strong Christian culture, a legacy of the group that founded it and gave the designers their vocation. Chan Chantha, once the second most senior designer to Seng, left Rajana after six years with the group to devote his life to the church full time. He is the only person to leave the group since its inception in the mid-1990s.

Sok Sophak, at 30, is the eldest of the craftsmen. He lost his father to illness in 1998. At just 18, Van Rasmei is the newest addition to the crew, and although both his parents are still alive, they are poor laborers who have no land. He is their hope for a retirement free from the backbreaking work of planting and harvesting rice for as little as $1 a day.

“I will go to the shop we have set up in Siem Reap, where Angkor Wat is, when I am trained. I want to see Angkor, and I want to create my own designs from there, too,” Rasmei says. “For me, the best part of my job is that customers love to see my work.”

Downstairs, a middle-aged American couple is trying to decide whether a chain bracelet set with a single, deep blue sapphire is their perfect memory of exotic Cambodia. Or perhaps an entwined leaf-patterned ring taken straight from the walls of Angkor and set with a single Pailin ruby at its heart?
Perhaps they will take both.

See also: Cambodia's Long Road to Recovery