Interview with Nisreen Kuku

There are more than 500 tribes in my country Sudan, with stories behind every single piece of jewelry. To keep these stories and pieces for the next generation, I have started doing proper research and documentation.

People in Sudan melt down jewelry for economic reasons, and this is a big problem. That's why I started collecting old jewelry and also the stories behind each piece. This has become my passion and my ambition: to conserve them for the next generations.

Usually, the same jewel is passed down for many generations. It is important to document it quickly, collect information from the owners. In order to do this, one may need to pay them money or ask them to keep the jewels in the museum. Sometimes the owners may not accept, and this brings to multiple negotiations.

I started my research in eastern Sudan and northern Sudan, and now I am working on western Sudan. I do my research by interviewing people from the tribes, always more than one person, to be sure to recollect and transmit the true story to future generations.

Four years ago, I opened a private museum to protect the jewels from being melted down. I am running this initiative alone with my financial means. Hopefully the government will support me later on. I love old jewelry, I spent a long time looking at them and I love sharing this passion with the others. I am very happy when I see the others learn something from them!

In our Sudanese culture, on the wedding day, we have to give the bride a quantity of jewels. Every Sudanese tribe has its own iconic pieces [for weddings]. They name it by specific names. There are a lot of imaginations and stories behind every single piece. For example, to keep the bride and the groom from “the black eyes” [evil eyes], some of the tribes present silver. The eastern tribes of Sudan wear silver for example.

There are very beautiful stories behind each piece. The northern Sudanese, the Nubians, love gold. On the wedding day, the groom may have to bring three full sets of gold jewelry to the bride. And there is a Henna Party the day before the wedding, where the people usually bring sets of [gold] bracelets. The mother, the aunt, everyone has to come with a present for the bride. The bride keeps these old jewelry pieces for her children. So it has become like stories being transmitted from generations to generations by the mothers.

In eastern Sudan, people wear more silver, like silver chokers; and they decorate their hair instead of their hands.

In the north, in Nubia, the woman has to wear jewelry all the time. If she loses her husband, she has to wear jewelry upside down, "Jakid Necklace", to say she is not feeling good. Jewels are not just for the wedding, they accompany you for the whole life.

The western Sudanese wear more shells and beads, and corn. The shells are traded from the seaside in the East and the beads come from India. Normally beads are used for dresses.

I look at good jewelry design all the time. I cannot stop looking at the good work behind every piece.

When I went to school, I learned more from a designer’s point of view. I learned more about the history of international jewelry, the new techniques of using tools, drawings, and gemology.

I learned a lot about the history of jewelry worldwide at L’ÉCOLE.

It was also the first time for me to properly attend a jewelry design class. I have never learned jewelry design before. I took the breadth and depth of what people had done through history to inspire my work. I started looking at my own country’s jewelry and keeping the aesthetics alive. I studied interior design after jewelry design. Interior design helped me to focus on proportion, contrast, texture, matching of materials.

I got to know about L’ÉCOLE thanks to the French embassy. I would have loved to have more time to practice with the jewelry tools at a L’ÉCOLE class! When I published my Instagram stories taken in L'ÉCOLE, many of my followers asked me about the school, its courses and registration. Probably in the future you could introduce Masterclasses. And next time, I would like to bring Leila, my daughter, to attend a kid’s workshop!