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Versatile, unique and vibrant - stunning Berber Rugs & Kilims
For hundreds of years Berber carpets provided physical and metaphysical protection for their makers and their families. Carpets served as blankets, shielding Berber families against the elements, while their talismanic designs deflected evil and promoted fertility. These mystical intentions perhaps explain the surprising asymmetries of Berber designs, as if the lines were themselves nomadic....
Monochrome carpets, on the other hand, yield the subtle pleasures of a Mark Rothko painting, also meditative and, for many, transcendental. Such freedom of design, far removed from the repetitive patterns of urban carpets, strikes a chord with Berber identity. The tribes of the Middle Atlas speak Tamazight, literally "the language of the free" and their tribe names can be equally evocative-one translates as "people from between somewhere and nowhere". Their designs seem to similarly hover between being and dissolving.
The colours of North Africa have been celebrated for centuries by well known artists from the west - Delacroix, Matisse, and Klee.
Somewhat less known, but no less significant is the historic connection between Moroccan art,rugs in particular,and 20th century western design. From Europe and the Bauhaus to 1960's and 70s American designers like Billy Baldwin,the simple geometric patterns of Moroccan carpets have long been used to enhance sophisticated modern furnishings and interiors. Pile carpets from the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco can be found in well known historic houses such as Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater and Charles and Ray Eames Pacific Palisades house in California. There is nothing dated about them, they will live on and on.
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