Our story
Damietta has made
furniture for 400 years.
We are a small part of that — one workshop, one set of hands, making things for the counter and for the room.
How it started
With a complaint.
A friend with a good espresso machine was tamping on a folded tea towel, because everything on the market was either plastic or priced like jewellery. We made him one out of a beech offcut. He asked for four more for his café.
That is genuinely the whole origin. No business plan, no market research — a workshop that already knew how to cut wood properly, pointed at a problem nobody local was solving.
Why here
Damietta is the reason it works.
The city has been Egypt's furniture centre since the Ottoman period. The knowledge moves through families rather than schools: how a plank will behave a year after you cut it, which joints survive humidity, when to stop sanding.
You cannot buy that in, and you cannot rush it.
One workshop
Everything is made in one workshop by the same hands. No second factory, no white-label supplier, no container arriving with our name on it.
Oil, not lacquer
Lacquer looks perfect for two years and then chips, and a chipped film cannot be mended. Oil wears evenly; rub more in and the piece is new again.
Built to be repaired
If it can be repaired instead of replaced, we build it so it can be. That limits how fast we can grow. We have made peace with that.
Cafés and roasters we have made for
The coffee range is where we started, and it is still most of what leaves the workshop.
Every piece is made to order or in small batches. Nothing sits in a warehouse.
