Exports range from pharaonic furniture to work of internationally acclaimed designer Karim Rashid
By Agence France Presse (AFP)
PARIS: Egyptians proudly say the pharaohs invented furniture. And now the country’s fourth-biggest industry is seeking to carve out a place on the global scene, with the help of the world’s top designers. “For you it may be only a piece of furniture, for us it’s a tradition,” says Ahmed Aly Hely, who heads the country’s Furniture Export Council.
Speaking at this week’s giant Paris home fair, Maison et Objet, Helmy cites as proof a 4,500-year-old chair made for Hetepheres, mother of Khufu, the fourth-dynasty pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid of Giza, often known as Cheops.
“We have no wood, no forests,” he says. “But we’ve been cabinet-makers for generations. Now we’re looking to make our mark on the international scene.”
Builders over thousands of years of the giant wooden boats that plied the Nile – one was found sealed at the base of the Giza Pyramid – and centuries-old makers of intricate oriental-style carvings and lattices, the industry employs a million people in some 200,000 companies, big and small.
Fine oaks come from Western Europe and the United States, beech from Europe and South America, while cheaper pine is from Eastern Europe.
But as Asian furnishings flood Western markets, Egypt’s furniture-makers are setting their sights on expanding exports, in the last two years alone bumping up sales abroad 39 percent to $200 million, with a four-fold increase projected over the next two years.
At the Paris trade fair, one of the design world’s top events with 83,000 professional visitors in attendance, Egypt did not go unnoticed. Sixteen big companies booked 1,000 square meters in a central space to show off goods ranging from elaborate copycat Louis XV or Regency models to high-end contemporary kitsch.
A glam four-meter-long couch in hot-pink fake-fur decorated with silver leaf (going for $1,300) jostled for eye-attention with an even longer five-meter silver leaf solid beech table (at just over $1,400), a console wearing camouflage and a giant jewelry box the size of a chest of drawers in cow leather posing as crocodile.
“If we don’t create a market for quality products we might not survive,” says Shereef Hady, a member of the exports board who heads one of the major furniture firms.
“Egypt is an emerging country and with trade barriers falling we have discovered we cannot endure the challenge of competing against others unless we promote and improve our goods.”
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At home, Egypt’s furniture-makers supply schools, hospitals, hotels and offices. Abroad, they supply US, European and Arab markets with elaborate and often hand-carved antique replicas – notably Louis XV and Louis XVI bedroom, dining-room and lounge-room sets – at more than reasonable prices.
The style, nurtured in Egypt following Napoleon’s late 18th-century take-over of the country, “is made of excellent wood and is half the cost of what you could find anywhere else,” says a London-based buyer who asked not to be identified.
“Egypt too is just a four-hour plane trip away, much more accessible to a buyer than the markets in Asia.”
But there are often order mix-ups and packaging and quality glitches, she says. And Egypt is unable to supply fabrics that met British fireproofing regulations.
To that end, the industry is developing quality-control centers and training facilities, while working with its main country buyers to streamline quality, says Hely, the head of the export council.
“We have cheap labor, we have new state-of-the-art factories and we also have the know-how of centuries of craftmanship,” he says. Another plus for Egypt is the industry’s capacity to produce small or large quantities of any single item.
Pointing to an oversize kitsch armchair, hand-painted and upholstered in fake leopard-skin and going for $520, one manufacturer notes: “In Japan or elsewhere you would have to order 1,000 of these – in Egypt you can order just five.”
Sticking to their reputation for fine craftsmanship, the Egyptians are shunning any idea of competing with cheap Asian products they say are designed for the mass market, instead looking to snare the medium-to-high end.
“We no longer want to just produce copies,” says Helmy. “We want to produce a fresh new look for Egypt. We are going into design.”
And Egypt’s new face is Karim Rashid, a New York-based designer ranked by pros as one of the top five talents in the world. Half-Egyptian, he wears big spectacles and has worked for the likes of Alessi, Prada, Georg Jensen and Issey Miyake.
Rashid has begun working for the Egyptians and offers more than 100 designs, “modern but linked to the deep history of pharaonic Egypt,” says Hady.
“This is a new concept in leading the Egyptian economy to globalization,” the manufacturer says.
“If you can open famous international magazines and you see it is by Karim Rashid and it’s produced in Egypt, it will make not only furniture but other industries flourish.”
