Hella el Khiari and Thomas Egoumenidas founded the multi-disciplinary design agency Flaÿou in Carthage in 2016. Their first products included chich-bich, a collection set of 3 board games – Chess, Backgammon, and Checkers. As of 2021, it has solely been run by Hella.
Hella at Flaÿou’s office and studio in La Marsa. (Image: Flaÿou)
Chich-bich is pronounced “sheesh” “beesh.” It means backgammon in Tunisian Arabic.
The idea for this collection first came to Thomas, a backgammon enthusiast, when he was on a road trip with a friend. At every stop along the trip, they played backgammon by drawing a backgammon board on the ground, carving dice from tree branches, and using pebbles for backgammon pieces.
Flaÿou’s collection of board games. (Image: Flaÿou)
The design for the games is inspired and adapted from the traditional pottery of the Sejnane region in Tunisia, where clay has been worked for over 3,000 years.
“We imagined the design of each piece by trying to emulate the allegoric and sweet shapes of the potter ladies’ traditionnal craftmanship. The board designs are originals creations with strong Amazigh influences, Sejnen being the land of an old Berber tribe called Mogods. Every single board design and customization is hand crafted by our team. For the packaging, we played around with the games being wooden cooked to present the full collection in Pizza boxes.” Hella el Khiari and Thomas Egoumenidas.
Traditional Sejnane pottery holding Flaÿou’s business cards. (Image: Flaÿou)
WATCH: A video of how the board games are made >
READ: An interview with Flaÿou >
