Marrakesh Express
Women Weavers OnLine
N'kob
Piece 1.10913 is a rather large High Atlas or Tazenakht pile rug. The main colors are a navy blue and gray, with some red and bits of orange. You can see them better on this close-up. The rug measures 5’5” x 9’3” and costs $775.
Here you see one of the two women who made the rug, Rehma; she’s the one on the left. (I asked permission before I took anyone’s photo, or put it online.) She has a really sweet face which you can see much better when you click the photo. The main workers were Rehma and Aicha (too shy for a photo), who are married to two brothers. Aicha’s husband is the man holding the rug on the left above. It took Rehma and Aicha plus another helper a month to finish this rug. Rehma has five children, three boys and two girls, and Aicha has four sons and one daughter. Both use the money for household expenses like clothing and groceries because weaving is a main source of income. When I asked what their husbands did for a living, they joked “they wait for the rugs.” That is actually more true now than usually, since there have been four years of drought in this area. The husbands have sheep and some land on which they raise barley and almonds when the rains are good, but recently they depend a lot on weaving.
Piece 1.10911, a flatweave with black and white stripes and twining, sometimes with touches of color, is called a chedwi and made only in the south. It's long and narrow; you can see the full piece by clicking on the photo. It belongs to Rahma's household, but it's not clear who made it. It's an older style and some with these colors use natural dye, but I'm afraid I was so busy with measuring and photographing that I didn't ask about this one. The pricing suggests that it is an antique piece. You can see the colors and detail better on the enlarged close-up. This is about 4 1/2' x 13' and costs $1355.
Jamila is a master weaver in N'kob. She began to learn weaving from her mother when she was ten, and by fifteen knew it quite well. She is in her twenties, still single, and lives with her parents. She weaves both flatweave akhnifs and the knotted rugs called ibooli here in Berber, and makes up designs herself. Her earnings are used for household expenses and to buy clothing. Women often weave together, both to speed the work and to visit. Here Sefiya and Ahroush are helping her work on an akhnif with multi-colored squares. She has several pieces for sale in these pages.
