Doors & Shutters
Bought from the contractors who tear old Cairo houses down — before the history disappears.
Nothing here is waste — only something waiting for a second life. Every piece is made by hand in Helwan, and carries a part of the soul of whoever made it.
Nothing on this list was made for us. Every one of them arrived at the end of another life.
Bought from the contractors who tear old Cairo houses down — before the history disappears.
Railings and staircases from the buildings he spent his childhood sketching.
Latticework screens, roof beams and door lintels, reworked for modern rooms.
Sourced and cut by hand after a client's challenge became an atelier signature.
Timber from Nile boats at the end of their working life, turned into tables and chairs.
Roof steel too far gone to build with — exactly right for sculpture.
Tell us the piece, the size, and the room it's going in. We'll pick it up on WhatsApp from there.
Statement pieces and full installations built for hospitality and retail spaces across Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Every piece passes through the same workshop in Helwan — no factory line, no shortcuts.
Nothing here is mass‑produced. What is available changes as the atelier finishes new work.Art & More · Helwan
Tell us the piece, the size, and the room it's going in. We'll pick it up on WhatsApp from there.
I WAS SEVENTEEN WHEN I SAW A LION IN A MAGAZINE AND COULDN'T LET IT GO. I BOUGHT MY FIRST BLOCK OF CLAY AND CARVED IT MYSELF.
I never had a teacher. I learned one material at a time — clay, wood, marble, stone, glass, granite, steel — anything that would let me make something with my hands.
Thirty years later, the workshop in Helwan still runs the same way: slowly, by hand, and always starting with something somebody else was ready to throw away.
Waleed was seventeen when he saw it in a magazine — a lion portrait, nothing more than a photograph — and something about it wouldn't leave him alone. He bought his first block of clay, and with no training and no teacher, he sculpted it himself: forty centimetres tall, made for no one but himself.
Not long after, visiting a friend, he noticed a few Pharaonic-style pieces sitting in the house. Where did these come from? The answer led him to a small workshop — and he started showing up. Every day. Watching, then helping, then staying late.
Long before any of this had a name, Waleed was a boy in Cairo photographing balconies — drawn to the ironwork, the carved stone, the details nobody else seemed to notice. That habit of really looking at old things never left him.
Years later it became a craft. He built friendships with the contractors who tear old houses down, and instead of watching a building's history disappear, he started buying pieces of it: doors, balcony railings, staircases, rusted roof rebar, wooden beams, mashrabiya screens, even old floor tiles.
A client once asked for mosaic tables — something Waleed had never made in his life. He took it as a challenge, sourced the glass himself, and taught himself the craft piece by piece until it worked.
It became one of the atelier's signatures: fountains, wall panels, tables and mirrors, all built the same way — patiently, tile by tile.
It started with an elderly English friend who ran a gallery in Cairo. Someone brought him a broken clay vessel missing two whole pieces. Waleed watched him work for hours — and when he was done, the missing pieces were simply there again, impossible to tell from the original.
Then came the dome of the Royal Geographical Society at Majlis El Shura, dating to the era of Khedive Ismail. Then an antique yacht, its bow carved with a lion figurehead worn down by decades at sea. He went on to formally study heritage restoration — because giving something old a second life, done properly, is a science as much as a craft.
Waleed designed and built an entire retail gallery for a client in Stockholm — shelving, display counters, storage — without ever leaving Egypt, shipped and installed to exact specification across three branches. Restored doors have shipped to Australia, Germany, Norway, the United States and the Gulf.
Among the collaborations he is proudest of is his work with jewellery designer Azza Fahmy, which began with a chandelier the two sketched together on a whim. It was built. It was installed. And it stayed.
A door pulled from a demolition site is not rubbish — it's a hundred years of somebody's life, waiting for a second one. We buy what others throw out, and we build from it.
We don't sand away where a piece came from. The nail holes, the old paint, the worn hinge marks stay on purpose. The mosaic sits alongside the history, never over it.
No factory line, no shortcuts. Every piece passes through the same hands in the same Helwan workshop, tile by tile, for as long as it takes.
Because every material arrives with its own history and its own flaws, no two pieces can ever be the same. What you buy is the only one of it.
Different disciplines, same instinct — take something with history, something worth keeping, and make sure it survives.
A lion portrait in a magazine, a first block of clay, and a self-taught sculpture forty centimetres tall.
A friend's Pharaonic pieces lead him to a small workshop. He starts showing up every day.
The atelier takes the shape it holds today — a workshop with a team.
Friendships with demolition contractors begin. Salvaged doors, railings and beams start coming home.
A full gallery fit-out for a client in Stockholm, designed and built entirely from Cairo.
Three decades on, still hands-on, still carving — the part he has loved most since he was seventeen.
We do not sand away where a piece came from. The mosaic sits alongside its history, never over it.Waleed El Sherbiny · Founder
Beyond the atelier's own collection, we've built statement pieces and full installations for hospitality and retail spaces across Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Hospitality and retail commissions start with a conversation — reach out and tell us what you're building.