Keep it suite       

In the mid-1990s Beirut was busy rebuilding itself inside and out. Interiors were stripped without a thought and furniture discarded like rubbish. Now, a new generation of locals are unearthing what their parents threw out.

Souheil Hanna makes the most persuasive case for pretty theft since Jean Genet wrote our Lady of the Flowers. ‘I first stole from my grandmother,’ he says, a playful twinkle in his eyes, ‘although she didn’t understand what she had or why I wanted it.’ As the ‘it’ in question was a console by Jean Royere, the Faberge of furniture design, the reason Hanna wanted it needs no explanation. ‘She had painted is this terrible green-she had to be punished,’ he continues. ‘I told her I’d buy her something Louis XIV in exchange. We were both happy.’  

With such an iniquitous start, it would not be surprising if, like Genet, Hanna eventually found himself making license plates for the government. His talent as a sleuth and as a teller of the occasional little white lie has led instead lo XXieme siecle, a cool white wonderland of a warehouse he and his sister Hala recently opened in west Beirut.

The Ali Baba of mid-century chic, Hanna’s collection runs the range from furniture and floor coverings to ashtrays and Op Art. There are mobiles by Calder, lamps by Verner   Panton and Joe Colombo and furniture by Mathieu Mategol, Gio ponti and of course, Royere, who ran a studio in Beirut together with Lebanese architect Nadim Majdalani.

‘In the 1950s and 1960s, we imported designers, not just their designs, ‘says Hanna, who is seated comfortably on one of his prize Ecusson chairs, still clad in its original powder-pink and baby-blues skin. ‘Most of what I have was made here.

Pre-war Beirut knew what it was and what it wanted. Hotels like Le Capitole, the St Georges and the pre-makeover Phoenicia (now saudimized beyond all recognition) were testimony to the city’s love affair with the future. Modern and Modernist, west Beirut was the most fashionable neighborhood in the Middle East. Many of the pieces in the XXieme may once have graced homes in the neighborhood. ‘Modernism suited our parents’ lives and they used it confidently,’ he says. ‘But somewhere along the way, the Lebanese began to think they were all descended from the sun kin. Now everything is gold and everywhere looks like Versailles. It’s nothing to do with Lebanon.

In the mid1990s, Beirut was a city busily remaking itself, inside and out. Interiors untouched since 1975 were torn out and thrown onto dumpsters.