From the medina with love — the Moroccan rug’s comeback
Do you know your Boucherouite from your Beni Ourain? Your Azilal from your Taznakht? These different types of Moroccan rugs have been hand woven by Berber women since around the 7th century, and long enticed admirers around the world. In the 1920s, Le Corbusier led the charge when he decked out the modernist Parisian masterpiece Maison la Roche in colourful, boldly abstract Moroccan floor coverings. The likes of Alvar Aalto, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Charles and Ray Eames further bolstered their mid-century cachet.
Today, headlines such as “Jacob Elordi Hits Up Morocco’s IYKYK Rug Dealer”, published last December by Vogue with a photo of the Saltburn actor at Marrakech dealer Soufiane Zarib, confirm their still sought-after status. Global brands such as Beni Rugs in New York and Paulig in Germany are bringing the country’s heritage craftsmanship to new audiences.
It’s something of a “comeback”, says Reto Aschwanden, managing director of non-profit organisation Label Step, which promotes fair trade practices in the handmade carpet industry. After “the international market presence of Moroccan rugs reached a low point mid-1990s”, there has been a resurgence over the past decade, he says. Exports have increased from $13.6mn in 2013 to $31.63mn in 2023, according to UN Comtrade data on international trade.
Most popular of all are the Beni Ourain rugs, with their “white and black weave, shaggy pile, and minimal design”, says Aschwanden. “The big problem for Moroccan producers is that the vast majority sold on the international markets aren’t made in Morocco,” he adds. “They’re marketed as Berber-designed rugs, but they’re made in India, in Pakistan, and pretty much everywhere else.”
One brand bringing a fresh perspective to Moroccan weaving is Beni, founded by Robert Wright and Tiberio Lobo-Navia in New York in 2018. A visit to a rug shop in the Marrakech medina sparked an acute admiration for the craft that has been “so manual, so analogue for hundreds, thousands of years”, recalls Wright. “It had been locked in time in a lovely way. There is a beauty to shopping for a rug in Morocco. You sit down, you have tea, you spend hours sorting through piles of rugs, waiting to see the one that catches your eye, hoping that it’s the right size for your living room . . . ”
The duo envisioned a less ad hoc approach: a made-to-order service, offering custom sizes and colours, in contemporary designs, but “without compromising the beauty and the soul of the craft”, says Lobo-Navia. The results are graphic yet tactile, favouring a muted palette. Collaborations with the likes of American interior designer Athena Calderone and Danish design brand Frama “encourage us to innovate”, says Wright. A recent collection with French-Moroccan architecture and design practice Studio KO led to Beni’s first Rabat rug, a style “traditionally destined for the royal palaces because they are very elegant and also really time-intensive to make”, says Wright. “There are 15 knots per square inch in one of our [other] knotted rugs and in a Rabat there’s more than 64.”
Today the nexus of their operation is in the village of Tameslouht, south of Marrakech at the foot of the Atlas Mountains. At the Beni Studio, design and development is housed alongside spaces for weaving and finishing — all chicly redesigned last year by interior designer Colin King with Tadelakt plaster walls and sage green windows.
It’s an aesthetically enticing proposition when “in pretty much all carpet-producing countries, there’s a shortage of weavers”, says Aschwanden. Attracting a younger generation to the profession is key. “When we first started, most of the weavers were in their fifties and sixties; now about 20 per cent of the team is in their twenties and thirties,” says Lobo-Navia.
Beni’s head weaver Rachida Ouilk began learning the craft from a maallema (master weaver) at the age of 12. Now aged 67 she’s revelling in “the chance to develop the weaving, to try new, more modern things and take it to the next level”. She also notes the “comfort and dignity” of the set-up, the pay (“two to four times what they would make anywhere else”, says Lobo-Navia), and the shuttle bus that brings the weavers from their villages to work.
It’s a salient issue at a time when Morocco’s ongoing reform of the social protection system (supported by institutions including the World Bank) has started to benefit artisan workers, who operate primarily within the informal economy. Countrywide protests recently spotlit Gen Z’s demands for better employment opportunities, health services and education.
In Morocco, weaving is done almost exclusively by women. “Then the rest of the supply chain is male-dominated,” says Aschwanden. “We love that we are now seeing more women popping up [in management roles].” He cites MRIRT Rugs, started by Laila Fadaoui, a Swiss-born, half-Italian, half-Moroccan designer based in Marrakech, which focuses on the high-pile Mrirt rugs traditionally hand woven in the middle Atlas Mountains.
“I work closely with female weavers in rural areas, understanding how it’s part of their day to day life,” says Dutch-Moroccan designer Mina Abouzahra, who started One Square Meter Berber to bring together Moroccan artisans and the Dutch designers Amie Dicke, Mattijs Van Bergen, Wieki Somers and Bertjan Pot. She stresses the importance of not only paying the makers fairly, but representing them properly too. “I want to show how the weavers put their energy and love into their work at the loom,” says Abouzahra, who made a VR movie of the weaving process and presented it earlier this year as part of the exhibition The Soul of a Rug at Marrakech’s Bahia Palace.
But preserving “a community with its traditions and way of life” while also turning a profit is a challenge, says Abouzahra. For Beni, a second smaller studio about 45 minutes away is paving the way for a future network of satellite operations in weavers’ hometowns, conceived to coexist alongside family and community life.
“How Moroccan producers find that sweet spot between preserving artisanal character and at the same time replying to modern market requirements . . . ” muses Aschwanden, “that is the hundred million dollar question.”
Beni’s New York loft is open by appointment; the collection is online at benirugs.com; its rugs are featured in ‘Two Rooms’, an exhibition by Casa Milana at London gallery LAMB from October 14 until April 2026
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