One of the things Morocco is rightly famous for is that it's a shopping Mecca. I held off from buying anything several months prior in anticipation of the shopping extravaganza that awaited me in Morocco and it did not disappoint!
As I mentioned in last week's post Touring Morocco we were very fortunate to have, courtesy of Heritage Tours, Ibrahim Mouhib a designer who grew up in Fez with us on all our shopping expeditions. As our guide Ibrahim created an itinerary that took us on a tour of the medina visiting artisans who are keeping their traditions alive. Our first stop was the Art Naji Ceramics factory, highly regarded for its intricate designs and painstaking application of classic tiling all laid by hand.
The Art Naji Ceramics reception area perfectly captures samples of the exquisite classic patterns for which they're famous throughout Morocco
A potter in the process of make a tagine, a staple of every Moroccan kitchen
This lady paints the complex layered patterns on countless pieces of pottery
Hard to tell from here, but this will eventually become a coffee table
The patterns are built with these tiny ceramic pieces that are literally put in place with the the aid of tweezers
The end result is this beautifully detailed coffee table
I found this rather intriguing - its a take on the Balcon du Guadalquivir a signature pattern by Hermes
We spent the afternoon at Palais Quaraouiyine rug merchants where we learned a little about the ancient art of their intricately hand woven Moroccan and Berber rugs, after which none of us could resist purchasing rugs to ship home... a very good day for the Palais Quaraouiyine showroom!
This traditional flat-weave Berber runner was the one for me...
This gentleman has been weaving these astonishing textiles with handlooms that are over a century old exclusively for top fashion houses in Paris and London...it was actually the workshop's day off and he came in just to show us his work. So glad he did...
Gorgeous - yes?