MASINA Furniture House looks like a gallery that combines oriental and modern styles. Exhibited items are unique pieces that you would keep for a lifetime and pass on to your children and grandchildren to become antiques someday.
“I like to encourage people to buy items of a value and keep them for their grandchildren,” said Lina Bangash, owner of this Dubai-based interior-decoration company.
“This culture does not widely exist here. We buy things of lower quality and price that fade over time. We are consumers that buy things to use and throw away.”
Bangash is an interior designer who studied in Florence. Masina House opened its doors in August 2003 bringing designs from abroad and designing pieces in-house.
Bangash holds an exhibition every few months introducing new interior designers focusing on Arabs for encouragement.
French-Lebanese interior designers Nada Debs and Cai Team were the focus of the last exhibition. Most of the attendees were interior design students and young people.
“Masina House has an eye for modern oriental design. So when they came across my work, the owner wanted to show it in her gallery,” said Debs.
According to Bangash, furniture design in the Arab world has been untouched for many years.
“When I came back to live in the Middle East, after living abroad most of my life, I found that there was so much value to the craftsmanship in this part of the world which has been neglected.”
“So I decided to take it to a more contemporary level,” she said.
As you wander in the Jeddah gallery, you would see light fixtures made of plastic and crochet that reflect light on the ceiling; these are Cai Team designs.
Old fabrics are from Silk Road countries in modern designs. Wood is solid and not pressed. There is a generous use of mother-of-pearl to decorate the wood.
