Households decorated with hand-made pieces made of wood and other natural materials are usually a pride to their occupants because of the finesse, originality and aesthetic value. Today, veteran artisans complain that the dominance of technology and mass production as well as a market hungry for cheap items have combined to make their handcrafts low in demand. Apprenticeship is therefore rare although three or four decades ago craftsmen were so keen to pass down secrets of their craft to their offspring or apprentices. An area like Kerdassa, near the Giza Pyramids plateau, home of hand-made rugs used to be a hub frequented by interested tourists and Egyptians. The drop in the tourist influx is responsible for low sales there but high prices keep local consumers away, shop-owners there say. According to Tolba Abdel-Ghani chairman of Asala Society for Folk Culture the l970s was the heyday for hand weaving, when Kerdassa displayed a huge variety of products by means of 3000 manual looms. Abdel-Ghani who inherited this profession from his father regrets that the business of hand-made products is dwindling. “Applied art students used to resort to Kerdassa workshops to produce their graduation projects," he told Al-Gomhuria Arabic newspaper. He regretted how frustrating the situation is now not just in Kerdassa but also in Akhmim, an ancient centre in Sohag Governorate with a worldwide reputation for hand weaving. He, however, underlined an initiative taken by Asala where versatile craftsmen are engaged to pass on their experience to interested trainees. He admitted though that low funding and the short period of the course had not yielded the expected results. Ali Hamama who belongs to a generation dextrous in the art of wood cutting, or ‘Arabesque', believes that to save what can be saved an Arab federation for traditional industries has to be established. Hamama, a descendent of a well-known family of carpenters and who has mastered English, German, Italian and French, said he was willing to train any number of interested young people and to pay them as well to revive a handicraft that is losing ground. Moustafa Gad, a professor of folk culture at the Cultural Documentation Centre says that there are 365 discrete handicrafts on paper, only 10 per cent of which actually practised, half of which are popular with consumers. He is enthusiastic to establish an archive that would authenticate handicrafts, urging officials concerned to offer financial and moral support to veteran artisans to help them market products of a very special taste.
