In the vast visual language of Egyptian everyday life, few objects are as quietly omnipresent as the woven palm chair. Found lining village homes, punctuating roadside cafés, and inhabiting both rural and urban thresholds, it is an object so deeply embedded in the cultural landscape that it often escapes scrutiny. Yet with Nakhl, a new design collection by Cairo-based studio Don Tanani, this humble chair is brought into renewed focus—not as a relic, but as a living, evolving artefact of Egyptian identity.
First unveiled during Art d’Egypt 2025, Nakhl emerges from a three-year process of research, material investigation, and conceptual reflection led by founders Alia and Tamara El Tanani. Rather than radically altering the chair’s recognisable form, the studio approached it with restraint and attentiveness, seeking to understand its lineage and latent potential. The palm chair, as they describe, is not static—it is a form that has endured through adaptation, shaped by generations of anonymous makers across the country.
At its core, the chair is a product of place. Constructed from locally sourced palm fronds, it reflects a long-standing relationship between environment, craft, and necessity. Lightweight, durable, and widely accessible, it is perhaps one of Egypt’s most democratic design objects—produced and used across regions, from the Nile Delta to Upper Egypt. Its lineage is often loosely traced to ancient Egyptian seating forms, yet its true authorship lies in collective memory, refined incrementally by craftspeople whose names remain undocumented but whose techniques persist.
Don Tanani’s own contribution to Nakhl exemplifies this philosophy of continuity. The studio preserves the chair’s essential structure, introducing subtle interventions—most notably sculptural oak elements that frame the base and armrests. These additions do not overpower the original form; instead, they extend it, creating a dialogue between raw organic material and refined craftsmanship. It is a gesture that signals respect rather than reinvention.
What distinguishes Nakhl, however, is its collaborative framework. The collection unfolds as a series of what the studio terms “groves”—a constellation of eight Egyptian designers, artists, and studios invited to reinterpret the palm chair through their own disciplinary lenses. In doing so, the chair becomes a site of multiplicity, carrying divergent narratives while remaining anchored in a shared cultural vocabulary.
Among the contributors, Buro Doqi draws from agrarian symbolism, integrating oakwood structures with mother-of-pearl inlays and woven textiles that evoke Egypt’s layered material traditions. Design Point adopts a more experimental stance, draping the chair in cascading black leather strips that transform its silhouette into something both sculptural and theatrical.
Nagada, known for its textile heritage, introduces handwoven cushions in earthy tones, grounding the piece in the tactile sensibilities of rural Egypt. Meanwhile, independent designer Nora Aly intervenes structurally, embedding Arabic calligraphy directly into the woven back—an act that merges language, craft, and form into a singular gesture.
Elsewhere, Rebel Cairo presents the Karima Chair, animated by vibrant kheyameya textiles that reference Egypt’s rich tradition of appliqué craftsmanship. Threads of Hope embraces maximalism, layering braided fabrics and cascading tassels that challenge the chair’s inherent minimalism.
Designer Yasmine El Melegy introduces a striking intervention: a stainless-steel vine weaving through the chair’s structure, articulating a tension between agrarian heritage and industrial modernity. In contrast, Farah Abdel Hamid replaces the woven backrest entirely with a brass sculptural form, shaped by the imagined imprint of the seated body over time—an exploration of memory, ergonomics, and material permanence.
Across these varied interpretations, the palm chair is neither fixed nor fragmented. Instead, it operates as a connective thread—a familiar object that absorbs new meanings without relinquishing its origins. Each iteration becomes a proposition: that heritage is not something to be preserved in stasis, but something to be continually rearticulated.
The reception to Nakhl following its debut has underscored this resonance. Audiences have responded not only to the aesthetic diversity of the collection but to its underlying ethos—a refusal to treat tradition as either sacred or obsolete. In an era where global design often risks homogenisation, Don Tanani’s approach offers an alternative model: one rooted in locality, collaboration, and critical continuity.
Ultimately, Nakhl positions the Egyptian palm chair as more than an everyday object. It becomes an archive—of labour, of landscape, of collective authorship. And in the hands of a new generation of designers, it also becomes a future-facing platform, demonstrating how design can honour the past while remaining open to reinvention.
