January 18, 2004

Fez-Kenifra


We left the hotel early this morning and stopped at the royal palace built in the 1960's in Fez. The doors were more rounded than typically seen in major buildings here. The tile work and molded ceramic pieces were very similar to others found in the city. What really distinguished the exterior of the palace was a set of bronze doors that dominated the façade. They were incredibly large with a great deal of detail visible from even the twenty-yard distance at which we stood. The artist is still living, so we went next to his metalworking shop on our way out of town. The eldest of the gentlemen there,

he was seated on one side of a large display meticulously hammering patterns into a large brass dish. It’s interesting to find brass, a mixture of two rather cheap metals, to be worth more than silver here. I also find it interesting that, in addition to the way things have been done for centuries, each shop we have visited seems to boast at least one new and unique development to the craft. This one, for example, was three different kinds of metal either fused or hammered together into one dish. They also had an array of pieces with coral and camel bone inlays; a technique I failed to encounter in my research as well.

With jewelry and rugs in particular, the older the piece the more value it has. This is a very complicated cultural difference. The possible explanations I have entertained thus far are the great respect this culture has for artisans and/or that the fading line of craftsmen almost necessitates a quality mark-up in price. The younger generations hardly seem concerned with or involved in any of the crafts we have explored.