Garagos Pottery Workshop
A Jesuit-founded village pottery of the 1950s near Luxor, in a mud-brick workshop by Hassan Fathy — known for its turquoise and blue glazes.
A village workshop
Garagos is a village in the Qus district of Qena Governorate, about 30 kilometres north of Luxor, close to the Nile. In the mid-1950s, French Jesuit priests working in the village founded a pottery workshop as a social project, to give local young people a trade and an income; the initiative is associated with Father Stephan de Montgolfier, who worked to revive local crafts in Upper Egypt. The workshop building was designed by the architect Hassan Fathy, in his characteristic mud-brick style with domes and vaults, in the same spirit as his New Gourna village on Luxor's west bank.
The pottery
Garagos pottery is made on the wheel from local Nile clay and decorated with glazes in turquoise, deep blue, green and earth tones, often with simple motifs of fish, birds and plants drawn from the local landscape. Its distinctive colours have made it one of the best-known names in contemporary Egyptian ceramics, found in homes and shops across the country. Visitors can see the potters at work, the kilns and the drying yards, and buy pieces directly from the workshop.
Around Garagos
Nearby is the village of Hegaza, where a related project trained local craftsmen in wood carving. Garagos can be combined with a visit to Dendera on the road between Luxor and Qena. Because the workshop is small and the village off the main roads, it is best to call ahead and travel with a driver who knows the way.
Exhibo editorial
You leave the highway, drive through sugar cane and palm groves, and arrive at a cluster of earth-coloured domes where a few potters sit at their wheels in the shade. The pots drying in rows outside are a blue so bright they seem to glow against the mud walls.
It is a small, unhurried place with a remarkable story: a mid-century social project by Jesuit priests, a building by Hassan Fathy, and seventy years of village potters keeping a style alive. Watch a pot being thrown, choose one to take home, and combine it with Dendera on the same day.
How to find it
Garagos lies about 30 km north of Luxor near Qus, off the Luxor–Qena road on the east bank; not all drivers know it, so share the village name in Arabic and ask locally for the pottery (al-fakhar). The workshop is the group of domed mud-brick buildings in the village; announce yourself at the entrance.
