This Unique Home Accessories Store Brings a Piece of Nubia to Cairene Homes

While your fancy designer couch and expensive mahogany dining table might take pride of place in your home, it's those rare eye-catching pieces that we amass from our travels or find when we're scouring antique stores that make a home a home - something with a story behind it. With Amarous, which means 'rainbow' in Nubian, we get colourful pieces infused with tradition and tales of one of the richest cultures in Egypt.
Showcasing a selection of items from a variety of Egyptian designers, Amarous Store doesn't stray from the theme of traditional heritage-inspired furniture while still maintaining an element of contemporary design. Located in Downtown Katameya Mall, the shop has one-of-a-kind artisanal pieces that add soul and personality to any room. Founder, Ghada Shery, takes the idea of Nubian household items and modernise them to fit Cairene trends. 

"Egyptian handmade crafts are beautiful but the problem is people don’t know how to market their pieces," she told CairoScene. "What I want to do is help craftsmen and I want Egyptians to start appreciating their craftsmanship again. The style of our items is very unique, but only serves for decorative purposes unlike their purpose in Nubian homes.”

While Shery curates items by other designers very carefully for her store, she also loves nothing more than getting her hands dirty and creating her own pieces, too.
“I take the items that Nubians still use in their homes today and then recreate them in a way to suit current modern trends," Shery explains.“I find that this country has treasures nobody knows about. The 'olals' are my favourite piece; I recreate it my own way.  I love their authenticity, but at some point I got bored of seeing them only glazed and used with the same color and texture. I thought about adding some Egyptian paintings and colors to them to give them more life, while preserving their traditional shape. I also noticed that people don’t necessarily use them for drinking anymore so I added a lid on the top and transformed so that it could be used as vase or a center piece."While Shery admires the intricate details and colourful patterns of Nubian pieces, she tries to balance between the striking colours used in Nubian artisanery and the more subtle colours found in modern homes, when creating or showcasing handicrafts. 

"We believe too much of a good thing is boring. Nubian techniques, colors and ornaments are great but they put too much eye-catching work in the same piece, for example, which doesn’t make it standout or in other words, it makes all their pieces look alike. So we try to balance it out." 

Check out Amarous Store on Instagram.