Where we live makes who we are. We spend more than half of our live inside our home, the ambiance we create inside our homes has a great impact on us. I strongly believe that a house built of stone or wood is much better than a cement house, a house furnished with wood and leather is much better than a house furnished with plastic and metal, there is no science to support my argument but I feel that a lot of people might agree with this idea.

Since the discovery of plastic, machines inventions, and the rapid increase of wood prices, lots of items in our homes had changed from wood to plastic or metal. Houses are now built with cement and cheap synthetic material rather than stone and wood, which makes us lose the quality that our grand parents used to have. I am sure they grow 90 years in a good health not only because that we have a better health care, but because they were preserved of the negative environmental impact by the material they used around them.

Living in a 800 years old stone house, only furnished with old pieces made of wood, leather, copper, and cotton or wool textile in one of the oldest cities in the world Aleppo (Syria) for two years had changed me for ever. It introduced me to an era when people pursued perfection and eternity of their handmade work. I can see this in the fine details they added to each piece of work whether it's wood, stone or copper.

Nowadays every thing is designed to last four or five years maximum. I am sure you noticed that your mobile, digital camera, and computer don't last more than this : they are perfect when you buy them, later on they slowdown or their quality decrease.

When me and my family moved back to Cairo we realised that we need the quality of life that we had in Aleppo . So what should we do? Move our furniture from Aleppo to Cairo or what? Here came the idea of Sindiana (the Arabic name of the Oak tree): Egypt also had its good time, so their must be old furniture that we can restore and bring back to life. I started roaming around Egyptian cities and I was amazed about what I could find. All types of furniture made of the most expensive wood (mahogany, walnut, oak, peach, pine) carved with excellent designs. All were unique, and all had one common thing, they where dumped in a dark basement, garage, or junkyard covered with dust and look useless. Believe it or not I heard it from some people that they never thought that this junk can have any value, and they used to break some wood to make a little fire to make some tea. This broke my heart.

With a minor repair work and traditional Egyptian finish made of nutshells, we have Sindiana shop full of a nice collection of wooden antique furniture. We also want to make sure to keep our prices as low as it can be, it has nothing to do with the real value of the items: we know exactly that it can cost 20 – 50 time our prices to redo the same piece. We know that it price in the west can be 100 times higher. We still prefer to restore more pieces, involve more workers who still can do it, teach more young workers.

We hope you will visit us soon, we are sure you will immediately find the piece of your choice. Please check the map for directions.

Mohamed Nawar , Sindiana manager.