00:00The story of Marrakesh isn't only written in its palaces, gardens and winding medina streets.
00:06It's written in metal, wool and cloth. Behind every handcrafted object is a maker. Behind
00:13every maker is a story, traditions passed from one generation to the next. A sheet of metal
00:19becomes a lantern that scatters light like stars. Wool becomes a rug carrying centuries of Amazigh
00:26tradition and a simple strand of cotton is transformed into the playful pom-poms that
00:30have become a signature of Moroccan textiles. This is made in Marrakesh.
00:41Morocco has been a country of many dynasties and also a crossroads of cultures and everything is
00:49represented in our craft. My name is Walid Namous, I'm the sixth generation of Lenoma
00:55de Marrakesh, a company that makes Moroccan handmade rugs. We are in our main showroom
01:02here at the heart of the medina in the oldest quarters built by al-Moravi dynasty. This building
01:09is dated back to the 14th century. It served many purposes but right now it's our modest working
01:16place to showcase our beautiful craft. In this showroom we have plus 28 000 unique rug all Moroccan
01:24handmade, sourced from all tribes in Morocco, vintage, traditional, modern and contemporary pieces.
01:31The people that are making the rug, they are spreads all over Morocco. Each region they have
01:37their respective resources, climate and weather and with that they offer us different textures.
01:43Most of them they are Amazigh tribe spread all over Morocco.
01:48In the atlas, every rug begins with the wall. The vertical foundation threads carefully stretched
01:55into the loom. Once the structure is set, the weaving begins, knot by knot, line by line,
02:01revealing the piece little by little. It's a slow and deeply human process guided by rhythm,
02:09patience and generations of craftsmanship.
02:11We have a very close relationship with the weavers. It's a great source of income for this region where
02:19we are making the rugs, but it's considered as a very therapeutic activity for the weavers,
02:26because it's a time in between ladies to chat, to sing and to do the work.
02:38On the loom, there are different technicalities of work. The major one is the knotting. The concept
02:44of the knots is to tie around lines of warp and like that we will have an end loose of
02:50the yarn.
02:51We have also flat weaving, a flat woven rug. We will use longer yarns and we will travel in between
02:57the lines of wefts, creating a flat surface instead of having a pile. In both cases, we can play with
03:04colors, create patterns that will make a rug beautiful. The tribe that made Morocco very famous
03:10is the Benihwaran tribe, because they are known for their use of the undyed wool and also the abstractness
03:18and irregularities in their patterns. Their avant-garde vision brought Morocco to the design scene.
03:25In this room, we have Tasnax carpets. This region is rich with the sheep breed called the Sirwa sheep,
03:32that produce wool with the very silky aspects. This region is very rich in the saffron and that's
03:37why their carpets are all yellowish-orange tones. So in this rug, we can see this beautiful knotting,
03:44the flat weave and the zenith. This is endite, taken directly from the sheep. This is poppy flower,
03:51orange from the saffron and this is blue indigo. We have brown sheep that when they are baby sheep,
03:58they develop a very pitch black fiber and as they grew up, it turned into brown. So the brown,
04:05black and cream, we don't spend resources dying these colors. It's important to have these rugs made by
04:11hand because in these days everything is must produced. So having something made by hand gives it
04:17authenticity. Also little signatures of imperfections gives more character to each piece. The handmade
04:25rug, you can feel it, it has a soul.
04:30People say it was like thinking out of the box. I didn't even know there was a box. As a
04:35result,
04:35I'd come with more complex ideas which my artisans would try and find solutions for.
04:41What we did is we just literally broke all the rules. My name is Yahya. I'm a self-taught artist,
04:49designer from London in the UK who discovered an unknown artistic side to my personality in Marrakesh.
04:56I was thrown out of my art class at school because I didn't know how to draw and I ended
05:00up an artist.
05:01It was centered originally in the design world and then it sort of morphed into the art world.
05:06I create crazy sculptures and artworks for clients around the world.
05:11The thing that drew me was light and metalworking. I adapted jewelry work into metalworking which allowed
05:20us to project from invisible sources of light patterns onto surrounding walls. It has a
05:26profound effect people say on their soul. It's beautiful for the eye but it makes people feel a
05:31certain way. The atelier started small and has grown into a very large thing with a lot of different
05:38people who can do a lot of different things. I'm going to show you something very, very special.
05:44This is the dragon. This is a crazy piece to create the movement of metal where it feels like it's
05:50been
05:50spun. Machines can't do this. What we decided to do is break it down into tiny little pieces. Let me
05:57show
05:57you over here. So what you're seeing here are a wooden template which is hundreds of individual sheets
06:02of wood that have been laser cut. When you place it together it creates this movement. So once we had
06:09this the next step was to be able to actually construct it. Let me show you how that's done.
06:13What you can see here now is the brass. This is one of eight sections that are going to be
06:19hand sawn.
06:19then engraved, welded to create a lotus form. So he has to now make the holes. The precision's insane.
06:27But these are my guys.
06:30The jewelers then saw out each section. Engravers then hand engrave the floor patterns on top.
06:37Then it goes to the welding department to start welding the sections together. This is the hammering,
06:43the shaping. You can see here the weld lines and what he's doing is he's smoothing this. He's just
06:48literally making the whole shape perfect. Then it goes to the polishers who polish all the welding
06:53lines. Then it goes to the electrification team who electrify it. And then it's tested by me,
06:59quality controlled. Inshallah I think the client's going to be very happy with this piece. Now I'm
07:04going to show you a big huge lighting installation outside. This piece is for a very dear friend of
07:09mine in Doha. Very, very big piece. And I'm just testing it to be sure that the positioning is
07:15identical to the plan. This gives you a sense of scale to the size that we work with. And this
07:22is
07:22actually small in comparison to other pieces we've done. And this was the key is the imperfection
07:28that I think we're hardwired to appreciate. It's when it's so clinically done and everything's so
07:33perfect and machine done that it sort of loses a little bit its essence. I fell in love with
07:38Marrakesh. It was the mountains and the light that originally seduced me. I just felt so at home here.
07:44I traveled all around the world, but I feel a sense of freedom being surrounded by so many creative
07:50people and an environment that still produces things by hand means that there seems to be some
07:55sort of soul that's here that hasn't been erased yet by the onslaught of modern technology list.
08:01I was fortunate enough to be awarded the highest honor by his majesty the king
08:06for changing Moroccan art and design. Something which has gone beyond the borders of Morocco
08:12throughout the Arab world. It's taught me patience. One of the greatest lessons I've learned
08:20from Morocco. Being in the crafts game, you can't necessarily control time. We can't control
08:26destiny. That we can strive as hard as we can, but we shouldn't necessarily be disappointed if the
08:32outcome doesn't go the way we hope it to go. And I think that's a very strong lesson of life.
08:43You spent eight hours of your day in your bed, which means a third of your life.
08:48So how could you buy a product that is synthetic, that has no comfort, that you have no idea where
08:54it's coming from. You have no idea how it was made. This is so important. My name is Valerie Barkovski.
09:01I am Belgian born. I live in Morocco since 30 years and I have developed a business around textiles. In
09:09Morocco, pompons have taken a large part of my business. So you can find my tassels in the bath towels,
09:17bed linen,
09:17pillowcases, bedsheets, duvet covers, table linen as well. We have tarbouche lamps that are made in
09:25ceramic, where we also have a kind of tassel attached. We have babouche. Then I also make one of a
09:31kind
09:31necklaces where I insert some tassels. Then at a certain point I had tassels that were attached to my
09:37labels. Somehow the tassel is with me since 30 years. So the tassels I discovered in the north of Morocco,
09:45this tradition of the mendil, a hand-woven fabric with stripes that women wear on their hips when
09:51they go to the fields. The women were pulling threads and making little tassels on the edges
09:55of their mendils. And I thought that was so beautiful. I was thinking, okay, maybe I should do some
10:01bath linen and that could be nice. It took me three years to set up my first collection. Three years.
10:08That is more than a thousand days. In any work that is related with craft, if you don't have patience,
10:14I think you cannot succeed, or you cannot make a product that has quality. When you work with craft,
10:19you need precision. With tassels, it's the thickness of the tassel. It is the length of the pompon.
10:25It is the way the yarn is twisted. I'm very, very picky with the quality. So that is really what
10:31is,
10:31what matters the most for me. Everybody in my workshop, they know it has to last as long as possible.
10:37It has a big social impact because you work with women who work at home. They don't have the
10:43opportunity to go and work in an office. And so we set up a whole system where women could take
10:49some
10:49work and take it home and bring it back whenever they could. At a certain point, I had 500 embroiderers.
10:55Suddenly they understood that with their hands, they could do something and make a living out of that.
11:00Just that act was important.
11:04When I work on unique pieces, which I do more and more, I work with an artisan very closely and
11:10I work
11:10in stages. So I prepare a drawing or I prepare a mock-up. And then eventually when the piece is
11:16done
11:16and I see that it needs some more, then I can adjust it. I see when it's finished, when I
11:22like it.
11:25Here we are in the cutting and pattern making area. Abdelilah works on this in the workshop. So now he's
11:32preparing several layers of fabric and you make the design and then you cut with a big knife. Here we
11:39have the stitching department with Khadija and Fatima. They are kind of magicians with stitching machines.
11:46They can do all kinds of products. Khadija is making some fitted sheets for a hotel project.
11:52Here we come in the department of Meriam doing all the ironing, also the control of the pieces. So if
11:59there is any small problem, she would normally see that and then she's doing all the packaging.
12:04So here we have the embroiderers, Ismail, Mustafa and Manika. So they work with me since a very long time.
12:12And all of them work on different techniques. Here you see detailing on some ropes that are hand
12:19embroidered and then further on this piece there will be pompons. Here Malika is embroidering little
12:25cushions that we are making. Here Mustafa is making some pompons. A tassel exists everywhere, but India has
12:35its own tassels. Maybe Greece has other tassels. Morocco has its own. And I like that idea that there is
12:42an
12:42identity in everything. That this craftsmanship, you can revise it, switch it, twist it and make
12:49something else out of it. I don't speak about saving a tradition because traditions evolve.
13:00A young person who is in Morocco will not have the same taste as her grandmother or as her mother,
13:06but if she can buy something which is from her culture, I think it's fantastic.
13:11The future I think is very bright. People are reclaiming what it is in Moroccan style and creating
13:18their own vision. It's very different and I think that's a good thing. I don't think necessarily that
13:22things have to stay exactly the same unchanged for hundreds of years. We receive a lot of offers to
13:29produce Moroccan designs in other countries, but we want to keep production in Morocco and support our people.
