In the early 1900s, the center of Cairo was the cultural heart of the city, with an opera house, gardens and elegant hotels such as the Grand Continental and the Shepheard, which catered to royals, aristocrats and the wealthy. It also was home to Bajocchi Jewellers.
And now, 125 years later, Bajocchi is still there, fulfilling customers’ desires and dreams. “We are the oldest jeweler in Egypt and the oldest Italian business still continuously operating in the Middle East,” Pietro Bajocchi, 74, said as he greeted a guest outside the shop on Abdel Khalek Sarwat Street.
The business moved twice over the years, opening this location in 1915. The black marble facade has been in place ever since, and now includes an unusual oval vitrine displaying eight emblems. “We have displayed the crests of the royal families and presidents we served in our long career,” Mr. Bajocchi said, gesturing toward the series that includes the crest of Egypt’s Viceroy, the title held in the 19th century by the country’s Ottoman ruler; the current Republic of Egypt; and the former Imperial State of Iran, as Farah Pahlavi, once its empress, has been a customer.
Mr. Bajocchi — who prefers to be called Pierre, as he studied in French schools and often serves French-speaking customers, several of whom today still call him Monsieur Pierre — is a fifth-generation artisan and the fourth generation of his family to run the business. Once inside the shop, with its crystal chandeliers and vitrines displaying gem-set jewelry, he pointed to a framed timeline with photographs of his ancestors. “The history of my family is the history of modern Egypt,” he said.
The timeline begins with Wenceslao Bajocchi, an engraver and ivory carver in Rome, working for the Papal court in the early 1800s. Later that century, the Egyptian government tried to attract businesses by offering favorable conditions and Wenceslao’s son, Paolo, a goldsmith, arrived in Cairo in 1875 to set up a workshop. Four years later, the country suffered a financial crisis and Paolo returned to Rome, only to come back to Cairo in 1893 when conditions improved.
In 1900, he and his three sons established Fratelli Bajocchi; in English, Bajocchi Brothers. The family business was interrupted by World War II. “When Italy declared war, all Italians in Egypt were interred,” Mr. Bajocchi said. “My father, my uncle and my two grandfathers were interred from 1940 to ’44. We didn’t regain the shop until 1948.”
The walls also display photographs of some of the business’s major creations, including a necklace of 520 diamonds that Mr. Bajocchi said took him 90 days to select — he buys all his gems in Antwerp, Belgium, the global center of the diamond trade — and 720 hours to make.
“We make only one piece. Everything is done by hand,” Mr. Bajocchi said as he led the way to the workshop at the back of the store, a visit he makes every day so “I can follow step-by-step the different phases of the work.
“It’s why I will never expand,” he said as he opened the workshop door. “I never want to lose the feeling of touching the materials. It’s my pleasure.”
Inside the small room with its big wooden work table, which has stood in its place since 1915, seven artisans were at work on high jewelry pieces, cutting stones, setting them in 18-karat gold, engraving and polishing. Most had worked there for decades, as had some of their fathers.
Prices for such special pieces generally start at $50,000 to $70,000, a range that Mr. Bajocchi said is “40 percent to 50 percent less than what it would cost in New York or Paris” because production costs are lower in Egypt.
He led the way upstairs to his private office, its walls lined with bookshelves and inset with vitrines exhibiting photographs and testimonials from some of his most notable clients, including Jehan Sadat and Suzanne Mubarak, two of Egypt’s first ladies. “President Sadat bought his wedding present from us,” he said, “a brooch in the shape of a butterfly.”
Nahwat Abdel Aty, a Cairo businesswoman, has been a Bajocchi client since 1998. “Dealing with such a refined family amazed me at how he understands his client and work together to create the most wonderful piece that the client longs for,” she said in an email. “He worked on the highest international level in his precision in his choice of stones and his setting.”
Mr. Bajocchi, however, is a realist about the scope of his clientele: “People today want small, casual jewelry they can wear every day.” Back in the ground floor showroom, he displayed boxes filled with rings and earrings made at Bajocchi’s two workshops elsewhere in the city and set with semiprecious stones such as yellow citrine, purple amethyst, pink tourmaline, green tsavorite, red agate and blue topaz. “I call this the Boutique Collection,” he said, with prices that hover around $1,000.
And in 2017, he opened a boutique in Zamalek, an affluent neighborhood on a man-made island in the Nile, “with the idea to have modern jewelry for the young, although we also sell jewelry with precious stones.”
Bajocchi Jewellers continues to be very much a family affair. Mr. Bajocchi’s wife, Cinzia, is in charge of pricing pieces, the inventory and gem-setting. And their son, Raul, “is in charge of manufacturing, from designs to final products,” Mr. Bajocchi said.
Raul, 41, was educated to take over the business some day. In 2007, after obtaining his bachelor’s degree in business administration at the American University in Cairo, he apprenticed with a master goldsmith in Valenza, Italy, and went on to graduate from the International Gemological Institute in Antwerp.
One of his noticeable effects on the business has been changes in one of its signature styles: the scarab, the beetle-looking design much like the ancient Egyptian symbol for good luck.
Following Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, Pietro said, “my grandfather crafted jewels in the neo-Pharaonic style.” The business has been making them as pendants and brooches ever since, including, he claimed, the first jewelry inspired by the cartouche, an ancient Egyptian symbol that traditionally included a royal name in hieroglyphics.
More recently, however, Raul persuaded his father to downsize the scarabs from about six centimeters, or almost 2.5 inches, to as small as 1.5 centimeters.
After all, times change. “Bajocchi is synonymous with integrity and tradition,” the elder Mr. Bajocchi said. “We want to keep our heritage, but adapt.”
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