Born in Cairo
Four decades ago, in a modest Cairo workshop, our father — Tarek Mokhtar — cut his first hide. What began as a trade became a calling. What he handed down to us was never just technique; it was a way of seeing leather — as a living material that rewards patience and care, and asks to be finished properly even where no one will look.
Today we carry that work forward in our own Cairo atelier. Every Kanz piece is still cut, tooled, and finished by hand. Our tools have barely changed in forty years. Neither have our standards.
Recognized in Japan
In the mid-1990s, our father was a featured leather artisan at Takashimaya — one of Japan's oldest and most storied department stores. The card they printed and hung beside his table still survives: his name, his story, and his work described in their own words as one hundred percent handmade.
That kind of recognition can't be claimed or bought. It's earned at the bench — and it traveled from a Cairo workshop all the way to a department store in Japan.
Buffalo, Carved by Hand
Buffalo is the hide most workshops refuse — thick, heavy, stubborn. We are the only workshop in Egypt that carves it into bags and wallets.
Only leather this thick will hold a carve, and only if it's vegetable-tanned the slow, old way — chrome-tanned hide splits under the tool.
On that surface our artisans cut each motif by hand, never laser, never print, raising and shading it until you feel its depth under a thumb — about four hours a panel.
Because every motif is cut by hand, no two are the same. The one you carry exists once.
Vegetable-tanned leather then earns a patina no finish can imitate: the piece does not stay as you bought it — it becomes yours.
Kanz
We named the house Kanz — Arabic for treasure, كنز — because we don't make things meant to be replaced. A bag that takes on your journeys. A wallet that softens to your hand. A piece that outlasts the season it was bought in.
We could use cheaper leather and faster methods. We don't. The hide is the point, and everything we make is in service of it — so that years from now, the piece is better than the day it became yours.