Tunis Village

A small village on a ridge above Lake Qarun in the Fayoum, and the closest thing Egypt has to an artists' colony. It is known for pottery: there are dozens of working studios in a settlement of a few hundred people, and most of them will let you watch, try the wheel, or buy directly.

The setting does a lot of the work — olive groves, mudbrick guesthouses with domed roofs, views down over the lake, and almost no traffic. It has become a popular weekend escape from Cairo, two hours away.

What to do

• Walk between the pottery studios; most welcome visitors and several run short workshops
• Stay overnight in one of the mudbrick eco-lodges — the village is at its best in the evening
• Visit during the pottery festival in autumn, if the timing works
• Use it as a base for Wadi El Rayan, Wadi Al-Hitan and Lake Qarun

The pottery is not traditional here. It arrived in the early 1990s with a Swiss potter, Evelyne Porret, and her Egyptian husband, the artist Michel Pastore, who settled in Tunis and opened a school teaching local children to throw and glaze.

The idea was straightforward: the Fayoum has good clay, the village had no economy to speak of, and children who learned a craft would have a trade. Some of those first students became master potters, opened their own studios, and taught the next group.

Thirty years on, the village supports dozens of workshops and a seasonal festival, and pottery is the main local income. It is one of the more successful examples anywhere of a craft economy being deliberately created rather than inherited.

The style

Fayoum pottery has a recognisable look — earthy glazes, blues and greens, simple animal and plant motifs, and a slightly rough finish that comes from local clay. It descends from Porret's teaching rather than from ancient tradition, though it borrows freely from Egyptian and Nubian decoration.

What came with success

Tunis is now firmly on the Cairo weekend circuit, and that has changed it. Land prices have risen sharply, guesthouses have multiplied, and some of the newer ones have little to do with the original community. Buying directly from a working studio rather than a boutique keeps the money where the craft is, and the potters will generally tell you who made what.