About SAÉA · San Diego
art objects in stone.
We are a brand that loves stone. We use stone as our medium, and those goods range from jewelry to homewares.
Our name, سایہ, means shade. It also means shelter, and protection.
We believe a home can be that shade, in defiance of the noise of the world. We write about it every week in Cross Sections.
The eye
My grandmother’s house was really warm and inviting, and very in touch with nature.
She had really large windows all over the home and they looked out into her garden. We were surrounded by greenery growing up.
Every summer we went up to our house in the Himalayas at Changla Gali. It was raw, rugged beauty, and it’s what made me realize how beautiful nature can be.
The most important places were my grandmother’s house, and museums and galleries in the different parts of the world I’ve lived in: the Design Museum, the V&A and the Tate in London, SFMOMA in San Francisco, Paris, Sydney.
Stores that are very beige and all white and gray don’t attract me. It’s the same reason I was attracted to onyx. It’s so colorful.
The standard
The strange one wins.
The technically perfect one still ships. The one with a flaw and something strange happening in it is usually our best piece.
“The one that’s a keeper is the one with the most variation in its veining and color. It’s always such a surprise when you cut into it.”
The refusal
We put beeswax on instead, because we want to give you something in its raw form.
I could ask our team to put chemical polish on our designs. It would make everything simpler. We’ve never done that. Polish makes onyx stronger and it does resolve a lot of the technical problems we have in manufacturing. We don’t do it.
When something has been altered too much, manufactured too much, polished too much, it’s no longer a piece of stone.
So it’s as close to the earth as possible when you touch it.
The making
- 01Every form starts in our San Diego studio, drawn from the stone itself.
- 02Our artisans in Balochistan, Pakistan slice large slabs into smaller pieces, then shape each one by hand with saws, grinders and hand chisels.
- 03Before it leaves the studio, each piece is sealed with food-grade beeswax instead of polish.
- 04Balochistan onyx forms as mineral-rich water leaves its calcite behind, one thin band at a time, over thousands of years. The banding and the color in every piece are that record.
A home you walk into and can’t immediately say, oh, this is art deco, or this is mid-century modern.
An eclectic mix of a lot of different styles that reflects the person, because a home is an extension of them.
Cross Sections
Letters on shelter, stone, and the rooms we live in.
Read the letters
SAÉA is still in its infancy. It’s not even two years old. We say art objects in stone specifically because we don’t want to be limited in what those art objects are, or what the stone is.
Shezal Babar
Founder & Designer · San Diego, CA