About Beit Barsoum: Three Generations of Cairo Goldsmiths Since 1942

In 1942, my grandfather Fouad Barsoum opened a small workshop on El Moez Street, in the heart of El Sagha, Cairo's gold district.

In this trade there has only ever been one way to last, and that is trust, earned one piece at a time. He earned it for decades. He was a real artist, and he was also the kind of man you wanted to sit with while he worked. People came for the jewelry. They stayed for him.

Years later he taught my father, Amir Barsoum, everything he knew. When my grandfather passed, my father took his place at the bench, and the craft and the name stayed protected.

Then there was me.

The businessman who could not manage the workshop

I grew up between that store and that workshop, mesmerized by what my grandfather and father could do with their hands. I loved being there. I loved learning. But I never saw myself at the bench. I wanted to be a businessman. That was the dream, so I went to business school.

When I finished, I joined the family business and took the store. That side went well, because it was exactly what I had studied. Then I turned to the workshop, the other half of the business, and I hit a wall.

I did not understand the craft. Not really. And you cannot manage what you cannot do.

Where the craft became a science

So I went to study it, in a program run here in Egypt in collaboration with the jewelry school in Turnov, Czech Republic.

I expected tradition. What I found was chemistry, physics, and geometry sitting underneath every technique I had watched my whole life. That changed everything for me. It meant this craft could be studied properly, and that studying it gave you consistent results instead of lucky ones.

Something clicked and it never unclicked. Giulia Savino saw it and asked me to come and teach. I taught for about a year, then stepped away to focus on building the business.

The years I stopped using my hands

To grow, I learned to design on the computer. Rendering, CAD, files, screens. For years I did not touch metal.

The business moved forward and I got quietly, steadily unhappy, and it took me a long time to understand why. The joy was never in the drawing. It was in the making.

So I went back to being a student. I took the diploma at Design Studio by Azza Fahmy, where Fadwa Nayef was my teacher and became my mentor. She is the reason I teach the way I do. What I know about metal I learned from my family and from schools. 

Then I opened Beit Barsoum.

Why I built this academy

I built Beit Barsoum for the person who has never made anything with their hands and quietly suspects they cannot.

Most people who walk through our door have full jobs and full lives. They are not artists and they do not need to be. No experience, no background, no special talent required. Just curiosity.

Working with your hands does something to your mind that nothing on a screen will ever do. I know, because I had it, I lost it, and I had to go and get it back.

What makes Beit Barsoum different

Every jewelry school I know of teaches technique. Technique alone makes you a good pair of hands. It does not make you a jeweler with a brand.

Here you learn three things: technique at the bench, design, and the business of jewelry.

I teach all three because I have lived all three. Business school, the family store, the workshop, the screen, and the bench. I learned what each one is worth, and I learned what it costs to be missing one of them.

Our programs

Beit Barsoum runs three programs from our studio in Fustat, Old Cairo, taught in Arabic and English, in small groups of no more than eight students.

The One Day Workshop. For people who want to try something new, make something real, and find out what this craft feels like in their hands. No commitment beyond a single day, and you leave wearing what you made.

The Four Day Workshop. For people who want to go deeper without changing their life to do it. More technique, more control, and a finished piece you would be happy to be asked about.

The Diploma. For people who want to start their own jewelry brand and are beginning from zero. Four semesters of technique, design, and business, taught together, because a brand needs all three to survive.

Visit the studio

Beit Barsoum is at 113 Qaryet El Fakhar, Fustat, Old Cairo, a few minutes from the oldest part of the city. Our ground floor is where we draw and design. Upstairs is the metalworking studio, eight benches, where the real work happens.

The craft we teach here was passed down through three generations of my family, hand to hand at the bench, and most of it was never written down in any book.

Because some stories are not just told. They are worn.