The board games by Flaÿou are handcrafted by female artisans in Sejnane, a region in northwest Tunisia. They take 1-2 months to create. Each board is infused with traditional methods, materials and the artisans’ personal touch to create pieces that embody the history of the Sejnane region. Cool fact: the pottery skills of the women of Sejnane was inscribed in 2018 on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity for the local technique of creating artifacts for the home out of terracotta.
Here, Flaÿou’s founders, Hella el Khiari and Thomas Egoumenidas, share with us how their board games are 100% handmade by the women of Sejnane:
1 The artisan in the Sejnane region of Tunisia extracts clay from the earth.
2 The clay is washed, freed of impurities, and then kneaded with crushed remains of used pottery.
3 The artisan then places the mix in a square mold provided by Flaÿou to create the board. A separate artisan exclusively works on shaping the pieces with their hands. Each artisan applied their own personal skills to create each board game. The pieces and board are set to dry for a few days depending on the time of year and weather.
4 White clay is added and polished with a seashell. The polished objects are set to dry for a few days in the open air. A second layer of white clay is added and polished. The pieces dry again for a few days.
5 The pieces are placed on a small fire on a bed of dried branches, cow dung cakes and hay.
6 Depending on what color is needed, the artisans coat the pottery with natural colorants extracted from the ground: white clay or red ochre from the near by hills. To obtain the dark black color, the potter uses a juice extracted from the mastic tree, a tree encountered in the north of Tunisia, that turns black when caramelized.
7 Hella of Flaÿou drives 2 hours from Tunis to Sejnane to pick up the pieces and boards and returns to her office and studio in La Marsa near the capital, where she makes the final touches to the games, including hand drawing the boards and pieces, and assembling the games.
Hella draws and fills by hand a backgammon board game in blue. (Image: Flaÿou)
READ: An interview with Flaÿou >
READ: About the inspiration behind the board games >