Nok nok! Who's there? High chair!

As Leila approaches the six-month mark, we've been increasingly thinking about what to do when she starts on solids.  We've been considering the different approaches to introducing food, but a key factor in whatever we decide is getting a high chair.  For the past couple of weeks she's been sitting at the table in a brilliant clamp-on seat that the P's brought out at Christmas and, while it's a great design and Leila likes being in it, the length of the clamps and the way they attach to our table mean that she won't be able to reach her food.

 

We've therefore decided we need to get a dedicated high chair.  If we were in the UK we'd probably pop off to Ikea and get their bog-standard Antilop model for £16, but as Ikea hasn't opened here yet (and bringing one in from the UK isn't going to be possible any time soon) we've needed to look for what's available here.

 

Our first stop was the trusty Mothercare catalogue we picked up from the Citystars branch back in September.  The thinking was that looking online would probably bring up a load of models that you can get in the UK but can't get in Egypt.  We were right.  Having identified a couple of models in the catalogue Alice therefore went to the Citystars branch with Leila to see what they had.  They didn't even have the range listed in their catalogue.  We’d particularly had our eye on this - http://www.stokke.com/en-gb/highchair/tripp-trapp-product-concept.aspx – a very clever chair design that ticks lots of boxes for us, and which we thought we might be able to get out here because it’s a big brand. However, even after trying a range of baby shops nowhere seems to have it or anything similar.  Therefore last night we spent a while discussing our options and settled on a model from Mothercare that would cost us 1100LE.  In the UK it would be half that.

 

Now, we've always said that the quality of locally made Egyptian crafts is fantastic, although we've usually been talking about soft furnishings or ouds.  However, we've just got back from seeing something new.  We were given the heads-up about www.noknokgoodwood.com by a friend from baby group, who has bought furniture for her son’s room from them. Having seen the website we were expecting to take one look at the price-tag and walk away but...wow...it’s amazing.

 

The thing that really attracted us to visit was this photo on their website:

 

Nok Nok's chair - handbuilt in Egypt

 

Compare that chair to this:

 

The original Stokke chair - probably built on an assembly line in China

 

That's right - Nok Nok do an exact copy of the chair! We went, we saw, we ordered. 700LE for the chair (in natural finish), and another 150LE for a custom built tray table with integrated harness.  Altogether, it's costing us less than the Mothercare chair we were going to resort to.  Admittedly some of the measurements of the Nok Nok version might be a bit different from the original, so that may limit the range of 'official' accessories we can get, but having played with it in the showroom we are very very happy.  It's being custom built, and should be with us in 2-3 weeks.

 

Leila checks out Nok Nok's version of the Tripp Trapp chair

 

 

So there you have it - local craftsmanship wins again!