Friday March 29th, 2024
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Ramses Wissa Wassef Centre is Reviving the Egyptian Tapestry Craft

Ramses Wassef set foot in Harania in 1952, and his centere has been spreading the art of tapestry crafting ever since then.

Farah Desouky

In 1952, pioneering Egyptian architect Ramses Wissa Wassef went to Harraniya, a village in Giza, with the belief that all children have the ability and instinct to become artists. Hoping to help kids express their free-spiritedness, Wassef founded an art centre in a secluded corner of the village where underprivileged children could learn traditional Egyptian crafts such as handmade wool tapestry and cotton weaving in an open environment.

“Ramses was very careful not to intrude on the community or change the social landscape,” Ikram Nosshi, manager of the Ramses Wassef Art Center, tells CairoScene. “Although it took him two years since he established the centre to draw in students consistently, Wassef made sure to be patient.”

The centre doesn’t offer tapestry classes in the traditional sense, because they don’t think of themselves as teachers of a physical craft. Rather, the centre is a space that allows tapestry artists to grow at their own pace without interfering with their creative vision. 

Currently managed by Ramses Wissa Wassef's daughter, Suzanne Wassef, and her husband, Ikram Nosshi, the centre has seen its fair share of hurdles over the years. “Wassef started with the centre’s first generation, and Suzanne carried on with the second generation in 1974, but currently we’re finding it difficult to have a third generation,” Nosshi says.

With fluctuating sales, the centre can only afford a limited number of well-compensated artists, with only 25 currently under their employ. The artists’ work has been acclaimed and featured all over the world, with two carpets featured in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, and two more to be displayed at Sharm El Sheikh ahead of COP27.

The art work can also be seen in galleries across the globe, including Germany, Switzerland, France and the UK.