Coutellerie de Jezzine

Jezzine cutlery — dark horn handles, inlaid steel, the firebird finial — has been the town's signature since the seventeenth century, when Haddad smiths first shaped it. This workshop is one of the few still forging, grinding and polishing every piece by hand.

A single setting passes through more than forty steps and two pairs of hands. The firebird is not decoration, the smiths insist: it is a maker's mark, and a promise that the blade under it was made in Jezzine and nowhere else.