CAIRO—When Ibrahim El-Bridy passed an old woman selling coloured cloth scraps in a market in El Marg district, northeast of Cairo, he never imagined her wares would change his life and career. But within a few years the popularity of the clothwork-on-canvas characters he created from the scraps enabled El-Bridy to win the 2017 State Encouragement Award in Arts.
El-Bridy, who is 58, was born in a small village in the Gharbia Governorate in…