EASTERN MOROCCO

EASTERN MOROCCO

This image shows an area of eastern Morocco. Morocco is located in northwest Africa, bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, Mauritania, and Algeria. Morocco is a leading producer and exporter of phosphates and also mines iron ore, copper, lead, zinc, cobalt, molybdenum, and coal. The image shows a portion of the Atlas mountains near the town of Rissani, which is located in northeast Morocco about 50 km (31 mi) from the Algerian border. In this image, dark areas between brighter rock outcrops are channels covered in sand that serve as conduits for seasonal streams that run through the dry desert region. The image was obtained by SIR-C/X-SAR on the Space Shuttle Endeavour on April 15, 1994 and shows an area about 34 km (21 mi) on a side.





Moroccan artifacts go a long way back and the carpet is certainly the oldest of all of them. Here is a country famous for its carpets and carpet production and a long history to go with it.



With household names such as Kilim (embroidered carpet from Mid Atlas), Glawa (stitched, knotted and embroidered from the High Atlas) and Taznaght (knotted carpet from the High Atlas) you have found a product which is a must to take home with you.

The loom is traditionally made from the local wood of the valley and is part of the tradition of each household in Morocco, a country famous for its carpets, rugs and mats. Khali from the Brothers Amazoze Imlil in the High Atlas Mountains have the last say in the village on your way up the valley towards Toubkal.



Although the carpets from Eastern Morocco have attracted little scholarly as well as commercial attention, their importance and influence on the development of rural Moroccan weaving culture - particularly on the one of the Middle Atlas - cannot be underestimated.
As in the Middle Atlas, the carpets were generally used as sleeping mats and covers but due to the lower regions and the milder climate they only have a pile about 2cm high, and various forms of symmetric knots, asymmetric knots as well as the Berber knot are used. The sizes normally vary between 160 and 220 cm in width and from 3 up to 10 meters in length.
Pile carpets in Eastern Morocco can be subdivided into a female style similar to the traditions in the Middle Atlas and a male style, which has an affinity to the traditions in Algeria and Tunisia. While the women produced the carpets for their own families in a self supporting nomadic economic system, the male traditions base on a system of specialised professional masterweavers (Arab.: mallem).
The very  large masterweaver carpets, sometimes up to 10 meters long, were made for wealthy families among the northern tribes of the Metalsa, Beni bou Yahi, Beni bou Zeggou and the Beni Snassen. Such pieces were regarded as extremely prestigious and served as examples and source of inspiration for the more widespread female carpet production. Occasionally the eastern Moroccan masterweavers also worked in the northern and eastern middle Atlas and hence were of significant influence to these regions too.
The design scheme of these carpets shows the traditional simple geometric Berber motifs such as lozenges, triangles, crosses etc. inscribed in a regular, symmetric overall lozenge grid-composition with well balanced colours containing high amounts of deep indigo blue and green in old examples. Borders are typical, but usually the ones along the

Antique Berber and Moroccan Carpets

Antique Berber and Moroccan Carpets


Antique Berber and Moroccan carpets and textiles have become increasingly rare over the past twenty
years.

Those that remain and are still available to the collector are now being offered online to galleries, interiors designers, private collectors and traders by Yallah Morocco as a selection of the finest traditional pieces. There is a limited supply of these carpets and they are in excellent and authenticated condition
Tribal customs, though disappearing, are kept alive and are still reflected in the brilliant and innovative traditional arts of dyeing and weaving in rural Morocco.

Morocco's rural weaving culture has attracted a great deal of attention from the international art world over the past 20 years. Much of this interest has been generated by a new generation of dealers and collectors who have used their understanding and appreciation of abstract modern art to judge these weavings, thereby gradually replacing the use of fineness, natural dyes and age as indicators of quality.
The minimalist and abstract forms seen in these rural weavings seem to both suggest an affinity with the earliest roots of the pile-weaving as well as represent the contemporary yet authentic creative and archaic spirit of tribal art.
Appreciation of the spontaneous and bold character of Moroccan Berber carpets began in the 1920s and 30s with classical modern architects such as Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto or Marcel Breuer who integrated them into their interiors and promoted them in important presentations and the interiors shops of the period.

Moroccan weavings can be divided into various categories. The sophisticated Arabic urban tradition has been subject to cultural exchange with the Mediterranean and was greatly influenced by the styles of the Ottoman Empire until the early 20th century. The carpet production of the nomadic Arab tribes is of minor importance, apart from the products of the Haouz region. In the urban embroideries of the 18th and 19th century the influence of the Moorish and Jewish migrants who moved back to Morocco from Spain in the late Middle Ages are still visible.
On the other hand the rural carpets of Morocco have followed regional Berber cultural traditions and appear to have a style that remained independent until the 20th century. And since there was not really a European demand before the 20th century, Moroccan carpets have always been produced mainly for personal needs or an internal market. It is surprising that the influence between the urban centres and the remote Berber regions was relatively small with the exception of the relation between the urban centres of Rabat and Salé to the Jebel Siroua region and parts of the Ait Ouaouzguite confederation. Otherwise only the Oulad bou Sbaa in the south-western part of the Haouz plains seem to have produced carpets orientated on an urban style before the 20th century.

URBAN CARPETS
Unlike in classical eastern carpet-producing countries, it is not known whether urban pile-weaving workshops were established before the 18th century, although Charles Grant Ellis and Jenny Housego suggested that a group of Mamluk carpets may have been manufactured in western North Africa (*1). It is safe to assume that the 18th century urban workshops of Rabat were established to adapt Anatolian examples to the specific demand for long and relatively narrow carpets in Moroccan urban houses for those that could not afford the prestigious but expensive imported pile weaves. Descriptions of an urban household in the kingdom of Fez in a French geographical encyclopaedia (*2) from the early 18th century speak about the floors being covered with carpets from wall to wall but neither describe the carpets themselves nor mention their origin.
The few examples of Rabat carpets we know from before or around 1800 appear related by design to Anatolian village rugs from Melas, Ladik, Mucur and the so called “Transylvanian” carpets from western Anatolia, but combined with regional Moroccan motifs (1 +2). These rugs first show the recognisable Moroccan trait of giving more weight to the borders and less to the main field (3). The colour scheme appears balanced in this period and the colour palette is limited compared to the carpets from later than 1850. Rabat and Médiouna have to be regarded as the main centres of Moroccan urban pile weaving, while Salé is known for a special type of textile consisting of a mixture of pile and flat weave (4).
By the second half of the 19th century the style of Rabat carpets developed towards a “design-overload” and an extremely diverse colour palette.

Morocco Traditional ..Carpets of Morocco

Traditional Carpets of Morocco

Moroccan carpets are famous around the world. In the West, the tightly woven beige Berber rugs are found in most modern homes, schools and offices. Although these rugs are stain resistant their dark flecks of brown and tan do not compare to the thousands of intricate designs and colours of the traditional Berber carpets of Morocco

If you take a stroll through the souk in any tourist town in Morocco, you are likely to be confronted by a half dozen men simultaneously asking if you would like to visit a carpet shop. Upon even tacit acceptance, you will be led into a ground-level showroom or up a narrow, winding staircase to a room with carpets piled from floor to ceiling. You may be shown a traditional wooden loom and offered mint tea before the shopkeeper starts laying out carpets in front of you.

For many tourists, haggling over traditional Moroccan carpets is a memorable experience.

There are two main types of carpets in Morocco: urban carpets and rural carpets. The capital of urban carpet making is Rabat, and you may hear these pile-weave carpets referred to as Rabat carpets. Carpet making in Rabat has been traced back to the 18th century, and the technique for making these carpets has been passed down through the generations. Urban carpets tend to be thicker and have larger borders than rural carpets. Designs consist of geometric patterns, as the majority of Moroccan art conforms to Islamic iconoclasm by avoiding artistic representations of living things.

Throughout Morocco’s rural areas, different Berber tribes continue to pass down tribal carpet weaving traditions. Carpet types differ by region; tribes in colder areas tend to produce thicker pile-weave carpets while tribes in milder areas produce thinner pile-weave carpets and flat-weave carpets.

The thickest carpets and blankets are found in the Middle Atlas Mountains. Carpets from this region can have up to 1.5 inches of pile, although designs on these thicker carpets tend to be simpler. Flat-weave carpets from the Middle Atlas have more intricate designs and a greater variety of colors. These are typically used as floor coverings and blankets. One good place to browse Middle Atlas carpets is in the town of Azrou.

While in the Middle Atlas carpet weaving is a women’s occupation, in eastern Morocco both men and women make carpets. The women make simpler, borderless carpets for home use, while men who become master weavers make complex carpets with thick borders and symmetrical designs. Two other areas where traditional carpet making still thrives is among the Arabized Berber tribes of the Haouz region (between the Middle Atlas and the Atlantic) and among the Ait Ouaouzguite tribal confederation in southern Morocco.

When it comes to buying a carpet, you will want to ask about knot density, the type of dye used and the type of fiber used. Higher quality carpets have a higher number of knots per square meter, are handmade and are constructed from 100 percent wool or 100 percent nylon. Cheaper carpets made of olefin are available, but these carpets are highly flammable (moving a chair across the carpet can create scorch marks), attract more dirt and can turn gray over time. Chemical dyes produce bolder colors but are more likely to fade, while natural dyes produce lighter colors and are less likely to fade over time.

If you are looking to buy a traditional Moroccan carpet, don’t feel pressured to buy right away. Take your time and get prices in several shops before deciding on your final purchase. Some shops will ship the carpet back to your home address for an extra fee. To get the best prices, buy your carpet as close to its source as possible. If you want to make sure less money goes to the middleman and more goes to the women carpet weavers, consider buying at a women’s cooperative.