Bethan Gray in design partnership inspired by Islamic geometry

When the US designer Mitchell Abdul Karim Crites first saw the work of Bethan Gray he was struck by her "subliminal understanding of Islamic geometry". And so the 70-year-old scholar in Islamic arts, who has been instrumental in the revival of Islamic craft in the Middle East, asked the award-wining, Welsh designer to work with him on a project.

The resulting collaboration brought together two very different cultures. "I had searched over the years for someone to work with but they were either too traditional or too modern," says Abdul Karim, who prefers to be addressed by his Muslim name. He adds that 38-year-old Gray "has one foot in the past, one foot in the present and an eye on the future".

Collaborations are reasonably common in the design industry but in a career spanning 40 years, this was the first time that Abdul Karim decided to approach a major designer. Gray, on the other hand, is no stranger to collaborations. At the London Design Festival last year, for example, she worked with Lapicida, a natural stone specialist, to produce a "Herringbone" black-and-white marble table (£30,000, lapicida.com). But it was her black-and-white striped tableware, known as the Alice collection, launched in Milan earlier this year, that really set her apart, says Abdul Karim.

The collection was inspired by Gray's travels across Europe and the Arab states, she says, where she was struck by the use of black-and-white stone configurations in Italy and Switzerland and by the pattern and form in Arabic design. "I've always loved geometric patterns but never made the connection with Islam."

Gray travelled to India to meet Abdul Karim who had, over the years, worked with an impressive pool of craftspeople in Jaipur and Agra. In 2004, he undertook the large-scale commission of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. About 350 inlay artists were trained and recruited over three years to complete the project, which involved setting intricate patterns of flowering vines on to 1,054 white marble columns for the entrance and side arcade, creating a legacy that lives on through a new community of stonemasons.

Abdul Karim is at present working on the world's longest monumental calligraphic marble panels. For the project, he is coordinating a team of 700 master craftsmen who carve and inlay Koranic verses with lapis lazuli for the Al-Shamiya extension project in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Before this he was involved with the recreation of the royal "chahar bagh" garden at the Jal Mahal - a magnificent "lake palace" built perhaps as early as 1734 in Jaipur - as well as designing interiors for James Goldsmith in Mexico and Lakshmi Mittal in London, all through his company Saray Design (saraydesign.co.uk).

Impressed by what she saw, Gray embarked on some research of Islamic architecture, guided by her new tutor. Following further close conversations with the craftsmen, they produced a collection under their new business label, The Ruby Tree, which is set to launch at Harrods in London, next month. "It's so important to listen to the craftspeople. Where you meet with a problem, the solution is better when you talk to them," says Gray.

Gray herself has links to India that perhaps explain her innate understanding of the design styles she is working with. Her maternal ancestors were Romany gypsies who travelled from Rajasthan to Persia several generations ago (before eventually settling in Wales) and were apparently talented musicians. Abdul Karim says there is a close correlation between the rhythm of music and that of design.

One object in the collection, the Petal bowl (£3,995), is modelled on the patterns of the dome of the early 17th-century Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque in the Iranian city of Isfahan. The "petal" pieces reference the dome of the mosque and Gray's stripe pieces are inspired by the swirling lines of 13th-century Islamic lusterware.

"One of the main reasons for the project is the social purpose, to continue the regeneration of the workshops and their master craftsman that Abdul Karim has been working for the past 40 years," says Gray. "It's been exciting to combine 21st-century techniques and a sense of commerce with age old traditional art and craft."

For the pieces, Gray and Abdul Karim sourced semi-precious stones from around the world, such as ruby from Tanzania, sapphire-blue lapis lazuli from Afghanistan and bluish-green amazonite from Mozambique. The latter is used to dramatic effect for Ruby Tree's Striped bowls, which combine strips of amazonite with black marble.

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The bowls are weighty owing to the marble in which the jewelled petals, or strips, of precious stone are inlaid. Also included in the range are incense burners (£3,360 each), a set of six coasters (£1,140) and pastry platters (£3,840). The partnership is also launching a bespoke service and has already been commissioned for several larger scale works, such as fountains, a garden pavilion and a swimming pool inlaid with thousands of semi-precious stones.

Serena Tarling is a commissioning editor on House & Home

Photographs by Julian Abrams/ The Ruby Tree

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