Morocco is a land of unique crafts, with many skills dating back hundreds of years. If you’ve scoured the secreted corners of the souks in Marrakech, Tangier and Fez, it often involves accessing a secret passage to discover a room of weavers or embroidery teams. Basket weaving is an old tradition of spread crafts, using materials in strip form, mainly the leaves of a little palm tree called “Mediterranean dwarf palm”, very common on the south slopes of the High Atlas mountains.

In the Moroccan countryside, the palm leaves were used to weave ropes, baskets, baskets of donkey saddles and various objects of domestic and agricultural use. You will find baskets hand crafted with leaves of this palm tree using traditional techniques of making baskets with hand cut leather handles.

Moroccan or Berber carpets are available everywhere, you hear the coppersmiths and metal workers before you discover their alleys of metal pounding. On my recent Camel Caravan, I was on the hunt for a brass lantern and handmade baskets. Moroccan lanterns are wonderful pieces of hand craftsmanship and dazzle at night. My team has made me aware of a small firm in Marrakech where I can make my own basket and learn embroidery to personalize the basket. My basket weaving skills are nonexistent, in Merida, I attempted a simple straw tassel binding class with local women, a small child would have better results. I’m happy to leave artistry to professionals and support the locals!

Morocco’s cultural wealth comes from traditional crafts; diverse and varied materials are finely worked by hand, with machines and tools that remain largely traditional, to make decorative and everyday objects.  Craftsmen handed down from generations, using the same raw materials and maintaining the same tools and craft techniques.

 It is above all a country with a rich past, where traditions are deeply rooted. Moroccan art can be classified into two categories: urban and rural. They are cities of art, rich in important traditions from the Orient or Muslim Spain. The oriental influence is particularly concentrated on the creation of rugs, textiles, and embroidery, while the Andalusian tradition is still seen in the arts of ceramics, metal, wood, and leather. If you haven’t visited the leather dying vats, this is an ancient art form, truly an amazing old craft.

Berber or rural art has an older and more “primitive” origin. Objects often have a practical function: furniture, tools, utensils essential to daily life.

Marrakech crafts are deeply rooted in tradition. Craft is passed on to the next generation and those who learn it use it to create real cultural industries.

I hope to meet the basket weavers in Tangier and will share the Marrakech basket excursion!

Handmade, but practical objects – let me know if you need a handmade straw hat or a woven market basket with handmade leather handles and your name embroidered on it!