Produced exclusively by women, for the Western market, Moroccan rug is transported by men to major tourist cities and especially Marrakech.
Between the agricultural and Berber world where they’re produced and therefore the Moroccan tourist cities or the western metropolises where they’re sold, the worth of the Moroccan carpet changes consistent with whether the transaction takes place between the producers and therefore the refore the merchants or between the merchants and the buyers.
But the worth of those Moroccan rugs, because it is made by the merchants, is predicated on an ambiguity of the definition of art, involving the ‘invisibilisation’ of the weavers.
WESTERN INVENTION OF A MOROCCAN RUG TRADITION
Western carpet traders have developed a mythology of Moroccan rug production: these would come from a standard , closed, stable, pre-mercantile and pre-colonial world, where beliefs and rituals would have remained unchanged.
By particularly valuing so-called old rugs, which are presented as unique, from leisure and therefore the domestic sphere (that is to mention non-economic), arrived on the market against the desire of their owners as a results of financial difficulties, they create a hierarchy that permits them to differentiate so-called ‘art’ carpets from contemporary carpets. These would be ‘craft’ or ‘tourist’ rugs and would be related to lower quality from large scale reproduction. However, the assembly of carpets in Morocco has, for nearly a century, been adapted to the western market.
The role played by the colonial administration within the production of Moroccan ‘indigenous arts’ can’t be analyzed solely as a heritage action. Indeed, for Lyautey, Resident General of Morocco (1912-1925), the event of those arts was a part of a bigger project of economic development of the country during which tourism was to occupy a key place.
Having noted that in Algeria, colonization had erased the local material culture likely to draw in travelers, he tried to revive Moroccan architectural monuments and encouraged the assembly of excellent quality tourist objects for Western audiences while developing tourism infrastructure. it had been also to seek out products to export as a source of foreign currency for the Moroccan protectorate.
The Berber carpet played a central role during this project, having been the primary area of study and industrial development undertaken by the Native Arts Service, and positively the foremost successful.
A Corpus of four-volume Moroccan Berber carpets was published (1923-1934): the chosen carpets were to function a listing of regional production to be exhibited in Moroccan ethnographic museums, along side models of carpets to be reproduced within the workshops, colonial schools and personal businesses.
A government stamp, a sort of controlled appellation of origin, was only awarded to carpets that met the wants of aesthetic and regional conformity (that is to mention , which reproduce models drawn from corpus) and technical qualities ( number of knots, all natural raw materials …).
The contemporary criteria for evaluating Moroccan art rugs still rests on this colonial aesthetic. the choice by the colonial administration staff has had an enduring effect on the taste of both Westerners and Moroccans.
Some sorts of carpets like Chichaoua Produced between Essaouira and Safi, were produced on an outsized scale in colonial cities, to the detriment of others considered less remarkable or simply not appreciated Western public and thus forgotten (eg Hanbal de Zanagah: an extended textile alternating woven and knotted bands).
The prestigious knotted carpets of Rabat, considered today, within the same way because the caftan and therefore the djellaba, was introduced during the colonization …, like traditional national objects, are nevertheless from colonization. For the generations who lived under the reign of Hassan II, the image of the monarch greeting the gang of his convertible car on avenues covered with carpets is commonplace. However, when the settlers arrived in 1912, the assembly of carpets within the cities had declined due to competition from Oriental rugs and European industrial carpets.
By revitalizing the assembly of carpets in Rabat, the colonial administration created a replacement marketplace for the Moroccan aristocracy. Today, whether consumers or producers, Moroccans share a preference for these urban knotted carpets to the detriment of the agricultural Berber carpet, knotted or woven, which has become the favorite of Western customers.
If their aesthetic differs from one region to a different , their thickness makes them more functional than non-knotted carpets that don’t have nearly as good insulation of the cold nor an excellent resistance to weather and footprints.
The criteria of originality and aesthetics are of less importance than that of functionality, and a carpet loses its value over time. Lastly, weavers consider that Westerners have very bland and old-fashioned tastes in terms of color, since they like worn, old-fashioned and worn-out carpets. to satisfy Western demand for pastel rugs that are closer to the common idea of natural dyes, Berber carpets are ‘aged’ with bleach and sun baths preceded by the superficial burning of fibers.
DEFINITION CHALLENGE: ART OR HANDCRAFT?
The Western conventional definition of the artist as a genius working alone, and expressing his intimate subjectivity, no matter the influence of society and free from market pressures, is in contradiction with the truth of the assembly of carpets in Morocco.
The concept of original and unique work doesn’t correspond to the practice of those societies where learning is predicated on imitation by the repetition of gestures and patterns. The carpets are copied from one house to a different within an equivalent village and between villages by the women’s network.
In such circumstances, it’s difficult to talk of an invention or to assign a replacement pattern to a private , each design being a part of a collective heritage to which all the weavers contribute and from which they will draw.
As Tarde has shown, inventions and innovations aren’t from one individual, or from a ‘great man’, but from the buildup of small ideas, infinitesimal inventions brought by an entire community into a standard work.
With time, imitation becomes personal and thus transformative appropriation. quite entirely original inventions, there’s appropriation, readjustment, juxtaposition or rediscovery (Tarde 1890/1993). This definition of tradition and trades of tradition is applicable to art, which may be considered as a craft work including a private touch of originality.
Rather than their originality, the Berber Carpet weavers claim their technical and aesthetic competence, evidenced by their commercial success.
In this sense, the anthropological definition proposed by Gel is more appropriate: the worth of objects of art and artists comes from the facility they need to form us see the planet in an enchanted or magical way.
This magic is that the very concrete product of the technical and artistic skills of the weavers of Berber villages. like all artist, they use their art to make sure the acquiescence of people within the network of intentionality’s where they’re immersed.
This interpretation of an influence of action through art is shared by the weavers, who, through their technical skills and their weaving rites, hope to urge buyers to pay their products at an honest price.
The literature on Moroccan Berber carpets tends to think about the temporal and geographical isolation of manufacturing societies which of weavers within the domestic sphere as a guarantee of the worth of carpets.
In fact, the connection between the market and therefore the domestic sphere is interactive, since the weavers never produce exactly what’s expected of them, while influencing the taste of the buyers. additionally to the aesthetic ideas conveyed by men, weavers are actively seeking new sources of inspiration in their near and distant world (exchange with female members of their family network in other villages or regions, patterns seen on television).
Through a process of transformative reproduction that renews their heritage, they reclaim the knowledge transmitted by men (themselves interpretations within the sort of oral or pictorial descriptions) consistent with their own technical skills and artistic abilities.
It is precisely this very break within the flow of data between weavers and their Western customers who, by giving them an outsized margin of freedom, contributes to their creativity. Thus, if the planning of Berber carpets also belongs to commercial spheres, the role of the domestic sphere is nonetheless the foremost important within the construction of the worth of Berber carpets, which might not exist without the gestures and therefore the weavers know-how.
BERBER CARPET WEAVERS: CHANGE AND CHALLENGE
The Berber weavers represent the archetype of the feminine artist who, due to her sex, is excluded from the general public and commercial sphere, rarely recognized as an artist and fewer paid than a person .
Because of their ethnicity (Berber and Moroccan) and social affiliation (lack of formal education and incomes), the Berber carpet weavers are presented as craftswomen transmitting unconsciously and hook line and sinker or understanding the tradition and therefore the patterns.
Producing to support theirs, they need economic concerns shared by recognized Western artists who, to survive artistically, must promote their work by increasing market price or other sources of income.
For the weavers, getting out of the shadow is sowing disorder within the categories ‘art’ and ‘craft’. The recent ‘outside look’ which makes them appear may mark a step towards their taking in hand of the promotion and therefore the mediation of their art, and therefore the management of the revenues which result from it.
