Oaxaca was a hotbed of crafts, with every village surrounding the capital specializing in something specific: rugs, textiles, black pottery, green pottery, metal work. Radishes (here, here, here, and especially here).

But holy fuck, Morocco. It’s not just that they make everything. Although they do. It’s that they’ve been making it the same way for centuries. Once you train your eye to look past the tourist schlock in the souks, the traditions here run deeper than seems possible. Like the indigenous peoples populating Oaxaca, Moroccan arts and crafts are deeply influenced by the various flavors of traditional Berber craftsmanship scattered about the country.

I’m hard pressed to articulate what they don’t make here. Ceramics, in all shapes and sizes, with specifically regional variations. Leather bags and leather shoes. Worked brass lamps. Rugs in an astonishing range of styles. Felting. Textiles. Raffia and palm woven and braided into unexpected and unlikely shapes. Wood working and turning.

Cigars. I don’t think they make cigars.

But that’s about it.

I obviously lack the experience and knowledge to offer up a disquisition on the intricacies of the history or design motifs of the local crafts. All I can do is stand in awe of both the depth and breadth of the accomplishments on display here, and offer a view into some of the things that stood out to us. Enjoy.

Rug Merchant 101

There must be a school they all go to, because the rug merchant who picked our pockets in the Medina was the spiritual twin of the gentleman who guided us in Mumbai. The process was a little more aggressive here, as befits the cultural differences, but the steps were the same.

It starts with a potlatch of rugs being rolled out. The maestro calls the shots and the underlings fetch and display the rugs. El Capitan is watching like a hawk for any positive sign, a nod, pointing, murmuring to one another, and guides the pulling of stock to zero in on our taste, like a carbon-based search engine continually refining its results.

All of this is done with patter as smooth as butter. No pressure, no need to buy, just tell me what you like. Have some fun, enjoy our Moroccan sweet tea, look at all our amazing rugs, each more beautiful than the one before.

Until, inevitably, it has been narrowed down to a specific rug.

This is a particularly fine example of a flat weave Saharan kilim-style rug.

Next came, predictably, Morocco’s favorite blood sport. Negotiating!. We started at 12,000 dirhams, or $1,200 USD. Not happening. So he started coming down. He offered $900. He told us that he had never done this before, and dropped to half price, $600. Dorothy and I put heads together. She loved it, and wasn’t wrong, but I suggested waiting and taking a visit to a Berber weaving village, where we could purchase from a maker.

Our new best friend became impatient, and resorted to the tried and true Moroccan bargaining technique (which was our first real exposure to it, since we were just about a week into our visit): “Tell me your price, my friend. If I like it, I sell to you. If I don’t like it, we shake hands and part as friends.”

I suggested we lowball him. If it worked, fine. If not, the desert beckoned. I threw out $400. Dorothy was convinced it wouldn’t work, but, like a trooper, she gave it a shot.

We are now the proud owner/operators of a beautiful Saharan kilim.

Jewelry

Most of the jewelry in the souks is pretty crappy and derivative, but we’ve found several shops that specialize in beautiful antique and modern Berber pieces. We met Abdullah in one, whose voice will be with us forever.

In the year and a half we’ve been doing this, this is the first time I’ve actually taken notes. I just had to capture his speech accurately. Here’s a few gems.

Abdullah: “You have good taste, madam.” Nef: “Uh oh, good taste costs money.” Abdullah: “Is that my fault?”

Abdullah, after Nef demurred once again at a too-expensive piece: “You have expensive taste and flat wallet.”

Nef had picked two pieces, and made the mistake of suggesting to Abdullah a wee discount. He pulled out a calculator and said, “Forgive me, I did not know madam would be inquiring about price. Had I known, I’d have started here.” He entered a number roughly twice the price he’d quoted her. “But don’t worry, we end up here.” And took 25% off on the calculator.

Dorothy picked out a lovely silver Berber bracelet from Figuig, an oasis village right on the Algerian border.

Wood Turning

We saw this gentleman on one of the souk’s side streets, and once we’d seen him we saw these rigs everywhere. When Bruce and I found it, the rig was unmanned. It was obviously a lathe, but we couldn’t figure out how it was operated.

Once we saw it at work, we realized that imagining how it worked was actually impossible. Under the heading of any-technology-sufficiently-advanced-is-indistinguishable-from-magic, I give you the Moroccan Hand Lathe.

And here it is…

Local Artisans

The Kasbah is much more residential than the Medina, with goods and services geared to locals rather than tourists. So every little fractal chunk of neighborhood has a produce market, a weaver, a caftan store, an herbalist…

Here’s our local caftan store. We walked past it every morning and afternoon, and always exchanged friendly Salaams with the owner.

And here are Meredith and Dorothy modeling their purchases.

Right around the corner from the caftan store, right on the edge of the produce market, was our local weaver, purveyors of shawls, blankets, jackets, and the like.

They really do weave them right on site.

Another nearby weaver (not our weaver, but geographically close) also did shawls, but specialized in bed throws.

Here’s our weaver at work:

Of course, we bought the most beautiful bed throw.

Leather

Morocco is a prodigious producer of leather goods of all kinds. Dorothy is eyeing a new purse at some point, but the shoes have been amazing. Shoes also come in fabrics and felt, but there is lots and lots of leather.

What jumped out at this store was the intaglio, where the pattern is created by hand cutting the dyed leather, exposing the raw leather underneath.

The leather was supple and the shoes fit beautifully. This is what Dorothy picked up:

These were from an entirely different shop, but what a great display.

A Big, Big Shop

You have to move through the souk like a shark if you don’t want to be a meal, but Nef and Dorothy stopped to admire a plaid coat in a little shop. That led to the owner telling us that he had many, many more examples in his big, big shop. Just around the corner and upstairs. We followed him, because what could possibly go wrong?

Nothing, as it turned out. He’d told the truth. He had a big, big shop in a small, small space.

Nef, of course, bought a coat. Well, she bought fabric in a coat-shaped package. It was agreed that it was a sensible purchase only if Dorothy completely dismantled it for parts and made an almost entirely new coat from its bits.

Brass Work

Other than shoes, the most common shops in the Souk may well be the brass lighting shops. They are legion, and even the commercially made stuff looks amazing all lit up. But there are plenty of makers doing remarkable work by hand, once you can spot them. Here’s just one shop.

Mosaic Tile

We got lost looking for the entrance to the Bahia Palace, and wound up in an industrial neighborhood, where we stumbled into a shop that made tile mosaics.

Until then, I hadn’t been looking at the tiled mosaics very closely. They seemed very regular, almost printed. And many of them are. But on closer inspection, most of the mosaic work is hand done. The two guys working at this mosaic shop were incredibly generous with their time, showing us how the work was actually done.

With ceramic tiles and really big hammer-chisels. It didn’t seem possible.

This is the carver using an incredibly blunt instrument to carve a little heart. Onto which he carved our initials. With the same tool. Without breaking it.

The D sound seems a little problematic, so this souvenir is for Torothy and Mark. Or, perhaps it commemorates our scene names, Time & Materials.

Once the carver has accreted a stash of tiny little mosaic pieces, the other guy gets to work. This demonstration is just on the floor, but in real life they’d lay out a dam in the shape of the finished piece, to hold the mortar. The mosaic pieces are laid out upside down inside the borders, and then the mortar is poured over everything at the end.

This is from a different artist, but you can see how complicated this can get. This is a corner of a much larger piece. As far as we can tell, other than the border, each piece is unique. And even the border has unique pieces. The skill required to get these to fit together is breathtaking. This is a master at work, bending the materials to his will.

They also make intaglio tile, like the shoes. This tile starts out as a stencil.

The stencil is at the bottom, the stenciled tile is in the middle, and the hand-carved finished tile is at the top. Here you can see it being carved out. Talk about a delicate touch. This should not be possible with that tool.

And here’s the finished piece. That is chiseled by hand. Ridiculous.

And here’s a larger piece, from our riad. This is common. It’s hard to grasp the immensity of the knowledge that has passed from master to apprentice over centuries.

And here’s a related thing. Obviously, this is wood and not tile, but the very same pieced mosaic technique is being used here with marquetry. This is neither common nor traditional. It’s a modern approach that we’ve only seen in one shop. If we could ship furniture back, this would 100% be ours.

And this isn’t mosaic tile, it’s tube lined. We saw very little of it, but this piece is magnificent.

Tire Art

This obviously isn’t an age-old tradition, and we only found two shops in the souk that used tires as their base material. But that doesn’t keep it from being pretty cool.

We picked up one of the little frames.

Trim

Given that the souks seem almost exclusively tourist-focussed, there are still plenty of shops that cater to locals. In fact, there are a surprising number of trim stores, selling the ingredients to make things, rather than the things themselves.

Ceramics & Glass

The ceramics in Fes were amazing, but Marrakech features ceramics from all over the country. And probably China, if we were looking closely.

Like everything else, it takes time to dig out the quality from amongst all the quantity. This shop had glazes we didn’t see anywhere else.

There are tea glasses everywhere, as well, but we found one shop with an amazing selection. We’re bringing back four. We also found a swell bottle that had been decorated with Berber metalwork.

Graphics

We’re always on the lookout for modern graphic works. Oaxaca was a positive hotbed, but we haven’t seen much in Morocco. But we did find Wafl Design, which refers to their work as brandalism. How can you not support brandalism?

Music

Music is absolutely one of the most essential crafts produced in Morocco. There are rich traditions across all of the Berber and Tuareg tribes, as well as the modern electric version, known as Desert Blues. We’d have loved to see Bombino or Tinariwen, but we settled for a concert of trance-like (for both performers and audience) Gnawa music at the Musée de la Musique, just a few feet from our apartment. Here’s a snippet.

Musée du Parfum

Go ahead, tell me perfume making isn’t a craft. Take your time…

The Musée du Parfum was a delightful little building tucked down a derb (alley). It had exhibits with the history of perfume making in Morocco, and examples of the ingredients. But the high point, to no one’s surprise, was the shop at the end of the tour. They had a great display of vintage perfume bottles, but they would also mix perfumes to taste from their library of scents and ingredients.

I was certain Dorothy would have something custom made, but she and Nef both fell in love with one of their core blends, called Soir de Marrakech. It was made from lime, amber, vanilla, jasmine, orange blossom, patchouli, musk, and sandalwood, and smelled completely different on each of them.

Plaster

The entire environment here is pavéd with sculpted plaster. You can see some fine examples below, from Ensemble Artisanal, and there are more in the post on the built environment. What we didn’t expect was to find it as a purchasable handicraft. But then we found the one store in the souks that did exactly that.

What we love about this piece is that it not only captures the feeling of the local architecture, but it’s colored with Marrakech’s red clay, which gives the buildings here their distinctive coloration.

Dyed Wool

There’s a ton of natural dyed wool here, which we didn’t need or want. But the display is spectacular.

Salty Snacks

Snacks are absolutely a craft. Get down off of that thing.

Every locale has its peculiarities for both sweet and salty snacks. Oaxaca has its distinctive ice cream, as well as hand fried potato chips sprinkled to order with flavor powders (mmm… adobo…) and bespoke Cheetos, characterized by their subtly flavored powdered cheese. Probably the first time those four words have been uttered in that order.

On the sweet side, Marrakech offers the expected Arabic honey/nut pastries, and the slightly less expected French confections. On the salty side of the street (which is where I live), there have been two local standouts. The first is hard to describe. Imagine (stay with me) that an M&M and a Dorito loved each other very, very much and had a baby. And that chocolate was a recessive gene and wasn’t passed down. Then imagine that you ate the baby. Fistsfull of babies. You animal.

It’s basically a Japanese peanut (Cacahuates Japones), which is really just an M&M without chocolate, coated in a delicately spiced cheese powder, like an artisanal Dorito. But here’s what’s crazy. As ridiculously good as they are, they are only the second best salty snack in Marrakech. What takes the prize? Weirdly, the humble corn nut.

They’re really just corn nuts. The corn is smaller than the bagged crap we get in the US, which must be pumped full of silicone. But they just taste delicious. I can’t put my finger on the flavor, but it’s spiced without being too hot, salty without being overpowering. They are simply perfection.

They come from this remarkable place, or it’s like. There’s an entire Snack Alley. What a ridiculously livable city.

Ensemble Artisanal

I’ve saved the best for last. Or buried the lede, if you prefer. Ensemble Artisanal is a generic term for what amounts to an antique mall: a larger space that hosts and rents spaces to individual businesses. It’s also the name of a specific complex, which is kind of like naming your gas station Gas Station. It can be hard to find on a map.

But the named Ensemble Artisanal is an oasis of calm and beauty right at the edge of the Old and New Cities. On its own, it’s a phenomenal space, all molded plaster, custom hand-cut mosaic tile, and carved wood. The grounds are dotted with shops of varying sizes, about 40 in all, as well as a small café and shaded seating.

It lacks entirely the bustle of the souks, which is lovely. There are shoppers, but nothing like the souk’s crowds. The shops are all rented to makers, so you’re never dealing with merchants. Most of them, it seems, have their workshops on premises. In addition, the roster has been curated to a fare-thee-well. Each shop seems to have the finest examples of its crafts in the city. These are exceptionally high-quality makers.

Finally, and maybe most importantly, everything in the shops is marked with a price and there’s no haggling. That makes the sales process effortless and fun. No one’s playing games and no one has the hard sell. I feel disincented to enter a shop in the souks, or even slow down in front of one. It’s just inviting an interaction I’m not going to enjoy.

But I can browse freely at Ensemble Artisanal, and have entered shops I might not have in the souks. For example, I’m not particularly interested in raffia, but what the hell. We went in and were blown away. We’ve been in every shop there, at this point, over multiple visits, and enjoyed every one.

So. To the shops.

Felting

This was the absolute highlight for me. The wonderful man who made everything here was a complete delight, and his work was astonishing. It was really hard not to buy everything there.

Dorothy picked up a cloche hat and I picked up a pair of slippers. Dorothy bought off the rack, but I had my slippers made to order. I specified the size, shape, and colors, and came back three days later to pick up my treasure, no deposit required.

My only problem was how desperately I loved the slippers, and how shattered I’d be when they finally gave out. So I went back to have another pair made. A backup, so that I could continue to live after my first pair shuffled off. A decision I will never regret.

Brass Work

There were several shops in Ensemble Artisanal that had brass lighting, but this was our favorite. We picked up a wall sconce, and got a look at the workshop in the back. The workmanship was stellar, but the process was hard to believe. So precise, so time consuming.

This is the piece we bought.

Passementerie

Everything in this shop was crafted from thin skeins of fiber, not unlike embroidery floss. They were fashioned into tassels, necklaces, bracelets, and curtain pullbacks.

Carpet

This was a huge space with multiple looms. One of the weavers let Dorothy sit down and help tuft a rug that was in process.

Raffia

A dizzying array of insanely beautiful weaving. Truly unexpected.