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We have a showroom on The New King’s Road in Fulham where you can view our wide variety of berber rugs in person. We are London's largest authentic berber rug retailer and we have hundreds of berber rugs in stock. Each one of our berber rugs has been purchased directly from the Beni Ourain people of Morocco so we can guarantee quality and authenticity. Each Beni Ourain rug has been painstakingly handwoven by the Moroccan Berber tribes using the finest quality organic sheep wool. We photograph each berber rug individually so you know exactly what you are getting before you buy. All orders are dispatched within one business day.
The urban rug can usually be ordered in various sizes, colors and designs chosen by the buyer. On the other hand, the rural type is an expression of Moroccan tribal traditions. This type often comes from the Atlas Mountains or Marrakech, areas that haven't had much influence from the Mediterranean. Rural rugs have intricate knotting or weaving on the back, rather than the backing you'll find on urban rugs. Artisans choose the color, design and theme, so they generally cannot be custom-ordered. Once you've found a reputable dealer of Moroccan rugs, you're ready to start shopping. You want to make sure the rug you're considering is hand-knotted because this indicates authenticity.
The quality of the rug is also determined by how many knots per inch there are. The more knots per inch, the finer the weave. A standard-quality Moroccan rug has 20,000 knots per square meter. This is a looser weave, and the design is not as intricate. A high-quality Moroccan rug is made with higher-quality yarns and has 90,000 knots per square meter. The design of these rugs appears very crisp. If you want a rug with premium wool, you'll want an extra-high-quality Moroccan rug featuring 160,000 knots per square meter. The designs on these rugs are very intricate. Ask the seller about the material the rugs are made from.
For the highest quality, always choose wool. For the softest type of wool, look for rugs made from wool sheared from a live sheep. The most popular type of Moroccan rugs is a wool-and-cotton blend; this is known to be a durable material that allows for many different types of designs. Be aware that authentic Moroccan carpets are usually not made with synthetic materials. Find out from the seller what types of dyes were used for the rugs. Rural rugs are generally made with natural dyes, made with saffron, poppy flower and indigo plants. If you prefer a wider choice of colors, go for an urban rug, which often utilizes synthetic dyes. Synthetic dyes, though not as authentic, do retain their color longer than natural dyes.
Moroccan rugs are seemingly a relatively recent and isolated carpet type. There is no "carpet highway" from 15th century Egypt to 19th century Morocco and there are no surviving Moroccan antique rugs from before a dated example of 1787 (1202 AH). However, in the last few years, vintage rugs and modern rugs from Morocco have become popular among designers and are an increasing area of serious study. One of the drawbacks is the ever-shifting ethnography of the region and the unpronounceable tribal names. The rigor of Persian, Turkman, or Turkish rug studies is lacking. There are many distinct types and tribes, and so to get a better handle, we shall limit considerations to a few of the more important groups.
Morocco more-or-less follows the Atlantic coast and there are three roughly parallel weaving areas: the plains around Marrakesh including the city of Rabat, the Middle Atlas Mountains, and the High Atlas Mountains. The latter two areas are inhabited by the aboriginal Berber tribes who have given their collective name to any two-tone, light-colored, allover lattice patterned carpet, whether hand-woven or power-loomed. Moroccan rugs are seemingly a relatively recent and isolated carpet type. There is no "carpet highway" from 15th century Egypt to 19th century Morocco and there are no surviving Moroccan antique rugs from before a dated example of 1787 (1202 AH). However, in the last few years, vintage rugs and modern rugs from Morocco have become popular among designers and are an increasing area of serious study. One of the drawbacks is the ever-shifting ethnography of the region and the unpronounceable tribal names.
The rigor of Persian, Turkman, or Turkish rug studies is lacking. There are many distinct types and tribes, and so to get a better handle, we shall limit considerations to a few of the more important groups. Morocco more-or-less follows the Atlantic coast and there are three roughly parallel weaving areas: the plains around Marrakesh including the city of Rabat, the Middle Atlas Mountains, and the High Atlas Mountains. The latter two areas are inhabited by the aboriginal Berber tribes who have given their collective name to any two-tone, light-colored, allover lattice patterned carpet, whether hand-woven or power-loomed. Mediouna, near Casablanca, weaves carpets that share the complex Rabat color scheme, but are somewhat wider and look faintly like a European style Karabagh rugs (Caucasian carpets that often used European design motives). They are probably the most visually complex of all Moroccan rugs. They are also workshop town carpets.
The carpets of Rehamna, also in the plain, have red fields with navy, orange, and yellow accents, in end to end asymmetric patterns of randomly strewn geometric motives. Some of these carpets exceed twenty feet in length. The best known Moroccan rugs are the work of the nomadic Beni Ourain Berber tribe of the Middle Atlas. Their tribal carpets have ivory fields with brown lozenge or square lattice allover patterns of varying degrees of regularity, and narrow or no borders. The pile is long, and both the ivory and brown are natural, undyed sheep tones. The wool quality is excellent, and the wool is sourced from the tribal flocks.
The knot is symmetric, and the foundations are all wool. The formats run somewhat long, about seven by twelve feet, and there are very few vintage scatters or runners. All the Beni Ourain carpets on the market are 20th century, mostly post-WWII, vintage rugs rather than antique rugs. The tribal weavers made the carpets for their own use as extra thick insulation on cold mountain nights. This convention has continued in their modern commercial production. Azilal rugs are the crazy sisters to the Beni Ourains. Also originating in the Middle Atlas, they take the geometric style of the Beni Ourains and stretch, fragment, distort, and dissolve the patterns into eccentric, asymmetric layouts, usually two-tone brown on ivory palettes, but sometimes on red.
Often they add spots of color to the overall bitonal palette. They are quirkier and more eccentric than the Beni Ourain. Again, they are partially or entirely borderless, with thick, long piles, and generally in long carpet sizes. The leading High Atlas tribe is the Ait Ouaouzguite with horizontal bands across the field, incorporating diamonds, stepped crosses, and octagons. The fields are generally red with some of the more modern rugs adding detail shades of navy and yellow. They also weave mixed technique carpets utilizing both pile and flatweave methods. A relatively recent type to have gained popularity is the Boucherouite rug whose pile is composed of bits of fabric, mylar tinsel, and leftover yarn ends.
These are erratically, wildly colorful and have playful, allover geometric patterns favoring lozenges. They are among the few Moroccan rugs in scatter sizes. The piles are long and irregularly clipped, adding to the total informality. They are the perfect children’s room rugs. Moroccan rugs are generally on wool foundations with coarse to very coarse knotting. Some of the Boucherouite rugs are woven on cotton. The knotting technique in Moroccan carpets is highly diversified: the regular Persian knot on two warps, a modified Persian (asymmetric) knot on three warps, the Berber knot wrapped around two or four warps, the Turkish (symmetric) knot with a variant. Only in Tibetan rugs, another sidetrack weaving tradition, is there such a variety in the odd and unique practice of knotting. The Berber knot is quite like the single warp Spanish knot, seen at least as early as the 15th century.
This might give a clue as to the origins of the Moroccan carpet. The Spanish might have picked up the art from the conquering north African Almohad Caliphate in the 12th century and retransmitted it back to Morocco in the 16th century or even earlier. But since so many intervening connections are missing in this story and they will, probably, remain so, this is only a hypothesis. Moroccan rugs come with little iconographic baggage, except Rabat carpets, and this makes them particularly versatile. One does not have to know anything about rugs to appreciate them. The long piles feel great under bare feet. The furniture is easy to place. There is no busyness. No medallions to dictate room order. They are cheerful and fun. They look modern. They are not expensive. They work extremely well in mid-century modern, bohemian, contemporary, and minimalistic design settings. Together these considerations have made Moroccan rugs immensely popular today.
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