Workshop in Isfahan, Iran
Khatam backgammon boards, chess boards, gift boxes and decorative pieces — every rod cut, every surface assembled and every miniature painted by hand.
Lamassu is a workshop, not a factory. In Isfahan we make khatam-kari, the Persian marquetry in which thousands of fine rods of brass, bone and coloured wood are bundled, glued, sliced and laid into star patterns no machine can imitate. From those surfaces we build backgammon boards, chess boards, gift boxes, accessory boxes and decorative panels. The painted miniatures on our finest pieces are the work of individual artists, women and men, each signing their own hand in the brushwork.
Board games
Backgammon and chess boards in khatam, from pocket sizes to display pieces.
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Accessories
Jewellery boxes, card boxes, pen boxes, mirrors and frames.
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Gift boxes
Presentation and corporate gift boxes, plain or painted.
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Marquetry decoration
Panels, decorative objects and restoration of older khatam.
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Khatam is not printed, transferred or veneered from a photograph. Triangular rods of brass, camel bone and several woods are bound into a bundle whose cross-section forms a six-pointed star, then sliced into wafer-thin sheets. Each sheet is a finished pattern. A single medium board can carry well over a hundred thousand individual elements.
There is no production line here. The rods are drawn and planed by hand, the bundles are tied by hand, the slices are laid by hand onto the carcass, and the surface is levelled and polished by hand. Machines assist with cutting timber to size and nothing else. This is why two boards of the same model are never quite identical.
The floral and figurative miniatures on our lacquered pieces are painted freehand by trained artists, Künstler and Künstlerinnen, using squirrel-hair brushes that come to a single point. Nothing is stencilled and nothing is printed. A detailed lid can take an artist several days, and the signature of each hand is visible if you know where to look.
Our work falls into four families: board games, accessories, gift boxes and decorative marquetry. Board games are the heart of the workshop, but the same surfaces and the same hands produce jewellery boxes, card boxes, presentation boxes and wall panels.
Brass wire, camel bone, jujube, ebony, walnut and betel, held together with natural adhesives and finished with a clear lacquer that deepens rather than hides the grain. Where a piece is inlaid with mother-of-pearl or finished in silver relief, that too is applied and chased by hand.
We supply galleries, specialist retailers, interior designers and corporate gift buyers in Europe and the Gulf. We are set up for repeat orders, consistent sizing across a batch, export documentation and consolidated shipping, and we are direct from the workshop rather than a trading intermediary.
Sizes, patterns, colourways, engraved dedications and your own logo laid into the marquetry are all possible. Tell us the occasion, the quantity and the deadline, and we will tell you honestly what is realistic — including when it is not.
Tell us what you are looking for — quantities, sizes and timing if you already know them. We reply to every enquiry within two working days.