ARTISAN PARTNERS

We work with many of our artisan partners one on one, others we visit in person but maintain relationships through our Producer Partners.

EL nafeza (The Window)

Located in a neighborhood of Cairo, El Nafeza is a quiet haven of industry and color.  It is led by long-time art activist Enas who created this workshop to employ the hearing impaired and find an alternative to the pollution problem of burning rice straw.  Using a grant from a Japanese paper group she learned how to make paper from scratch.  

Glassworks

Located in the City of Tombs within modern Cairo, the glassblowers practice their ancient craft much like it was done a thousand years ago except for an electric fan and a light to work at night.  Their homes and workshops reflect that as well, the City of Tombs is a community where centuries past poor artisan families moved into the small building size mausoleums left by in the Greek occupation of Egypt.  Their art and community have been recognized as culturally unique by UNESCO.

Most of their current work is beautifully bubbled and has weight because it is recycled, the glass powder (or Corning as they call it) we see in the US is too expensive to import.  While we lament their inability to make everything they want we are big fans of what they create in the characteristic recycled style.  They are talented and flexible, some of the videos show Susie De Rafelo and Rania Seddik describing new product design while the glass is being blown.  

We hope to help keep this art form alive and maintain it's roots while meeting the needs of the modern consumer.  This community used to have hundreds of glassblowers but are now down to about five inter-related families who eke out a living a few shards at a time.

Faiyum Oasis Potters

This is an internationally recognized village of potters with access to the local sand/ore, unchanged in thousands of years, collected locally from a dried prehistoric sea. A well known archeological and paleontologic site.

One of the characteristics of glaze created with the sand is a pink/red opalescent tinge that identifies the work as legitimately Faiyum produced.

See videos of Ibrahim Samir, the Hakim Brothers and Rawya Abldelkader