Lebanon · Wood / Hardstone Carving (bone and horn handle carving, combined with metalwork)
No single standardized local term documented beyond general reference to the craft
The carving of phoenix-bird-shaped cutlery handles and the crafting of accompanying stainless steel blades in Jezzine, a mountain town in South Lebanon, developed from a blade-making heritage stretching back some 250 years, when families migrated from Damascus and Aleppo to work as blacksmiths producing agricultural tools, knives, and swords before pivoting toward decorative cutlery. Traditional black handles are carved from cow or bull horn, which polishes to a lustrous jet-black; white handles are made from camel bone. Finished handles are inlaid with fine resin, silver, and brass before being fitted to pre-stamped steel cutlery bodies. The craft is in the process of extinction: workshops that once numbered around 35 in the 1950s and 60s, employing more than 150 people, have fallen to roughly a dozen today, overseen by the Jezzine Crafts Cooperative, with very few of the new generation entering the trade.
Risk level: Critically Endangered · Not independently inscribed
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