David Degner

Cairo, Egypt · Editorial photography · 2012 and 2015

Azza Fahmy’s hand draws a jewelry design in pencil on paper.
Azza Fahmy sketches a jewelry design in Cairo, 2012.

Azza Fahmy: Drawn by Hand, Made by Hand

Azza Fahmy’s jewelry begins well before the metal is polished. In Cairo, sketches, conversations and the work of many hands give shape to pieces that carry references to Egyptian and wider regional culture.

Fahmy began learning jewelry making in 1969 as an apprentice in Cairo’s Khan el-Khalili bazaar. What grew from that training became Azza Fahmy Jewellery, a design house whose pieces are still made by hand in Cairo. These photographs follow two editorial assignments. Agency Fish commissioned the 2012 photographs for Qatar Airways’ First & Business Class magazine; The Brander commissioned the 2015 photographs for its profile of Fahmy.

Portrait of jewelry designer Azza Fahmy wearing a necklace against a dark background.
Azza Fahmy in Cairo, 2012.

Azza Fahmy and her design team, 2012

The 2012 assignment asked for Fahmy at work and for the making behind the finished jewelry. At the design table, a line on paper is weighed against a form held in the hand. The photographs stay with that interval: looking, drawing, discussing, revising.

Azza Fahmy sits with members of her design team around papers and jewelry forms.
Azza Fahmy and her design team discuss ideas in Cairo, 2012.
Azza Fahmy draws in pencil beside circular jewelry designs.
Azza Fahmy’s pencil and jewelry designs, 2012.
Azza Fahmy leans over jewelry forms and sketches with a member of her design team.
Azza Fahmy reviews work with her design team, 2012.
Several jewelers work at closely spaced benches in Azza Fahmy’s Cairo workshop.
Jewelers at work in the Azza Fahmy workshop in Cairo.

At the jewelers’ benches, 2015

In 2015, The Brander’s brief called for a portrait of the designer, the people at work, and the details of handcraft. Amira Sayed El Ahl’s accompanying profile described a house shaped by research, cultural memory and apprenticeship. In the workshop, that story becomes physical: marked benches, small parts, tools and repeated gestures.

Craftspeople move between benches on the workshop floor.
The Azza Fahmy workshop floor in Cairo.
Metal patterns and small parts lie on a worn work surface.
Patterns and parts on a jeweler’s work surface.
A pair of hands works among tools, metal pieces and marked bench surfaces.
Tools, materials and marks of use at the workbench.
A jeweler files a small metal piece held in one hand.
A jeweler files a metal piece by hand.
A small jewelry component is held above a heat-marked block.
Heat and precision at the workbench.
A jeweler holds a ring against a spinning polishing wheel.
Finishing a ring at the polishing wheel.
The Azza Fahmy storefront faces a street in Cairo’s Zamalek neighborhood.
The Azza Fahmy store in Zamalek, Cairo, 2015.

The Zamalek storefront is the finished public scene. The photographs return to what sits behind it: a sketch, a workbench, and the accumulated touch of the people who make the jewelry.