About Beksan Designs

We are two sisters, Meyla Ruwin and Nevra Shapiro, jewelry designers & entrepreneurs who started Beksan Designs in 2011 together to build a family business. Meyla lives in San Francisco and Nevra is in Santa Monica, California. We were born in California and raised both in California and Istanbul, Turkey. Our mother was from Istanbul, Turkey and met our father at UCLA in California. We named the company after our Turkish grandfather whose surname was Beksan. We grew up visiting our grandmother in Istanbul. During those visits, she often took us to the magnificent Topkapi Palace. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Topkapi served as the main residence of the Ottoman Empires’ Sultans and the jewels in their collections strongly inspired our love of jewelry and our jewelry designs. As sisters, we agreed we wanted to create a stylish, sustainably sourced, high quality and affordable jewelry and accessory business that reflected our American-Turkish heritage. Together we come up with fashionable designs that blend Ottoman style with modern flair, then work to create pieces ourselves & with local artisans to make them a reality. Read their story