How to read a Middle Atlas rug
With Fatima Ait Ali · Aït Hadiddou, Middle Atlas
A digital course for people who want to understand what they are looking at when they look at a handwoven rug. I will teach you the difference between a genuine Middle Atlas piece and a factory copy, how to read the pattern vocabulary, and what the knot density and pile tell you about how the rug was made. You will not be able to weave a rug after this course. You will be able to understand one.
- Lessons
- 6 lessons
- Total length
- 3 hours
- Format
- Self-paced video
The ability to identify weaving region, pattern vocabulary, natural vs. synthetic dye, and approximate age from a photograph. A vocabulary for discussing a commission with me.
Buyers considering a commission, people who inherited or bought a Moroccan rug and want to understand it, and anyone curious about the tradition.
6 lessons · 3h total
- 1The loom and the knot — two traditions compared28 min
- 2Wool: what makes it good and where it comes from22 min
- 3Natural dye — what age does to colour35 min
- 4Pattern vocabulary: the diamond, the comb, the snake path40 min
- 5Reading a rug: field, border, and what sits between them30 min
- 6How to commission a rug — what to say and what to ask25 min
Fatima Ait Ali
Wool weaving — Middle Atlas rugs · Aït Hadiddou, Middle Atlas, Morocco
A cooperative or artisanal ministry has vouched for this artisan. The institution stakes its reputation on the introduction.
I have been weaving since I was twelve. My grandmother taught me, then her sister taught me the patterns my grandmother did not know. I work on a vertical loom in the room behind my house. Most rugs take me between six and ten weeks depending on the size and the knot density. I work in undyed wool from the village and dye the colour myself with madder, indigo, and walnut. I do not weave the same rug twice. If you collaborate with me, you will tell me what room it is for and I will weave you something only you have.
In the archive
Fatima has documented this tradition in detail in the Amussu Archive. It is free to read.