DUBAI: Aljoharah Alrasheed, head of design at Saudi brand Teeb, discusses the company’s AlUla Design Award-winning piece – ‘AlUla Terrains: Dates Serving Set,’ created in response to a brief that asked for ‘cultural retail’ objects inspired by “the heritage, landscape and artistic legacies of AlUla.” We participated in the previous AlUla Design Award and we were really excited to do it again this time. Every aspect of AlUla is really inspiring, especially the natural landscape surrounding it. This time, we were really inspired by the harrat, which were formed by volcanic lava a long time ago. We wanted to do something related to the culture; to the heritage of Saudi Arabia, bearing in mind that the product should have both aesthetic beauty and a function. That is the challenge we had, and we nailed it. As a product, we wanted to portray the hospitality aspect of Saudi culture. What’s common in, I’d bet, every Saudi house is that the first thing you serve visitors is Saudi coffee accompanied by dates. Dates are really something we cherish in Saudi Arabia. We consider them like gold in our country. And anyone who visits AlUla, any monument or any historical location, once you step out of the car, someone will approach you with a plate of dates and a cup of Saudi coffee. This date set is a piece of art you can put on the shelf in your living room, yet it’s very functional. It’s stacked very minimally, but every layer has a function. The top part is where you put the seeds from the dates, the second part is where you dip the dates in tahini, and the last compartment is for serving the dates. At our company, Teeb, we have a certain process; every product we create is always around a story — whether local or international. We believe the gift starts with a story. What is it about? Is it a thing I’d go tell someone about? We research, we dig deep for every piece we make. And they all have a hand-crafted quality to them. In this case, it’s a stone carver. We found a great carver; he does it purely by hand. We worked closely with him until we got this amazing clean cut piece that looks like a volcano. We can truly say this is made in Saudi: it uses Saudi mediums — basalt and white stone — and it was designed in Saudi by a Saudi designer.