When Amina and Mazen were planning their list of wedding gifts, they contemplated a few items by designers Suzanne Al-Masri and Mahinaz Al-Messiri. Both produce jewellery, outfits, and home-décor items that use modern versions of traditional or ancient Egyptian motifs, some of them Pharaonic as well as Islamic and Coptic.
“When we were doing up our house, we went for a generally modern design, but for the purposes of accessories we wanted to introduce something that was particularly Egyptian while also avoiding the tacky items that are poor imitations of originally beautiful patterns,” Amina said.
Both Amina and Mazen grew up in the Gulf city of Dubai where modernity and state-of-the-art items are everywhere. According to Mazen, this was perhaps where the decision to opt for a mostly modern theme for their house came from.
However, he said that the way both he and Amina had grown up had included a clear association “with everything Egyptian”.
“Like other parents who have to bring up their children in the Gulf where they work, my parents, and Amina’s, made a point of keeping Egypt as part of who we are,” Mazen said. “I guess this is why we were both in agreement about wanting to have some elegant items that would reflect the history of Egyptian art in our house, especially as we also have to keep living away from Egypt for work purposes,” he said.
According to Sarah Al-Naggar, a graphic designer, the interest in designs that reference modern versions of traditional Egyptian motifs has been gaining in popularity within the home-décor scene for a number of years.
Most recently, she said, this interest has taken on a much larger significance with more and more companies commissioning designs inspired by the history of Egyptian art.
When Al-Naggar entered the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo in 2011, the trend was already there, and since then there has been growing interest and demand. Al-Naggar said the trend has come a long way from Islamic designs and rural motifs to pencil cases decorated with chocolate wrappings from the 1960s or film posters from the golden age of the Egyptian silver screen.
“Some are done in great style, but others have been simply very poor-quality art — or rather very poor copy and paste jobs,” Al-Naggar said.
However, it has been Pharaonic art that has proven more of a challenge. “Hardly anyone has worked on it, and hardly anyone has come up with innovative creations,” she said.
Having worked both on free-lance jobs and for a large production company, Al-Naggar was keen to have a try with Pharaonic themes. This, she admitted, was a big challenge for someone who did not want to play the copy-and-paste game, but instead wanted to produce quality art that would be attractive for people of all ages.
“My idea was that Pharaonic art is part of our layered identity as Egyptians, and my concern was that it usually comes in the unfortunate replicas that are sold at souvenirs stores in zones frequented by tourists,” Al-Naggar said.
Having found a comfortable niche with the work she has been producing since 2017 using a diversity of Egyptian motifs, especially items carrying Nubian faces and traditional sayings, Al-Naggar decided to try her hand at Pharaonic lines.
It was an exercise that she started to work on in 2019 and that took a couple of years to produce some innovative designs that she felt happy about.
“The challenge with Pharaonic art is very complex, not just because one wants to avoid the stereotyping, but also because one wants to take the colours and designs of Pharaonic art to modern places,” Al-Naggar said.
“I felt that if I just used the same palette, I would not have contributed anything new and would have simply fallen into the trap of mock-ups,” she added.
Al-Naggar was planning a series of home-décor items with motifs carrying Pharaonic inspirations. But first she decided to apply her designs to empty drinks cans. Unfortunately, the designs were ready just when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and the project had to be shelved as Al-Naggar took a job with a Riyadh-based promotion company.
While she kept on working on history and identity inspired themes for the campaigns that the clients of the company were working on, the Pharaonic designs were still there waiting. After some fuss about the work of another Egyptian designer that used some Pharaonic lines for a promotion campaign for a fizzy drinks company, Al-Naggar decided to get her own work out and put it on her social media account. She was surprised by the impressive reaction she received.
According to Cairo resident Naira, who is about to finish decorating the room of her first-born child, the kind of designs that she saw in a news story on the work of Al-Naggar would have been exactly the kind of thing that she would have loved to have for her baby’s room.
“I wanted something Egyptian, pretty, lively and joyful; this would have been it,” she said.
However, not having seen Al-Naggar’s designs in time, she decided to play it safe and opt for basic tree and animal designs. “Nevertheless, I think that we have room to work on when it comes to children’s items, and I think Al-Naggar’s designs could offer a good start for something that is Egyptian and compatible with a room of a newborn baby,” Naira said.
Al-Naggar agrees that there is room to emphasise the visual identity of traditional and other Egyptian art.
“It is not impossible to connect general taste with the roots of Egyptian identity; it just needs serious conceptual work,” she said.
She noted that the success of prominent Egyptian jewellery designer Azza Fahmy, who has long used traditional motifs in her work, is also something to look at both in terms of modernising such motifs and in using them to create successful businesses today.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 24 August, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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