🔒 The weaving of brocades from Fez is described as a tradition that “disappeared everywhere else in North Africa”. It said that the ancestral know-how had its roots in the era of the Merinid sultans of the 13th century.
Abdelkader Ouazzani, the last of Morocco’s brocade master weavers, has been repeating the same gestures for 63 years in his dilapidated workshop in the heart of the old city of Fez.
His entire body engages in the delicate job, using a complex drawloom mechanism made up of a large wooden frame topped with beams, rafters, blades, pulleys and counterweights. He is secretive about the “rules of the art” which he learned long ago in his youth, when, he says, “there were no industrial machines” to do the job.His work is both physical and meticulous: it takes an entire day to weave a metre of brocade.
It said that the ancestral know-how had its roots in the era of the Merinid sultans of the 13th century. Ouazzani, on the other hand, works on commission for a clientele he describes as “the elite of the elite”.A digital tablet he uses to show pictures of his most beautiful pieces — and of his grandchildren — is the only modern object in his workshop that is otherwise crammed with ancient furniture.The master hides his most cherished “treasures” in a small wooden cupboard protected by a dusty tablecloth.
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