We’ve won a customer service award from Houzz, the largest online home interiors community with 40 million users globally. We are a bit late finding out but it’s not every day we win an award so we had to post about it. The award is based on customer feedback so we would like to thank all our lovely customers for taking the time to submit a review of their shopping experience with us.
I wanted to write about the new addition to Riad 72 after my visit in September last year but I was sworn to secrecy as it was still a work in progress. The new section, an ancient Riad adjacent to the existing Riad is now open for business so I can share my photos with you.
The owner, Giovanna Cinel, the architects and interior designers, Project Ch(ouf) have created a sleek modern look using traditional Moroccan crafts: zellij tiles, turned wood and tadelakt in a contemporary colour palette.
The Riad courtyard features traditional Zellij tiles in a striking pattern of dark cherry,rich plum, pale pink, beige and cream. The tiles were individually handcrafted and it took over a month to lay the floor. Sunlight reflecting on the surface of the tiles creates the illusion of rippling water and when you look down on the courtyard from the floor above it looks as if vines are trailing toward the central fountain.
Look up to the first floor and you can see the creamy white tadelakt walls, the horse shoe shaped arches and the handcrafted wooden latticework balconies in a contrasting taupe. The window frames and traditional wooden Moroccan doors are also in taupe contrasting beautifully with the walls and the zellij tiles.
Plush velvet sofas, brass tables and geometric wallpaper work well with vintage flea market finds and create an elegant space. The designers have cleverly brought the colours of the Medina into the Riad using a rich palette of reds and pinks.
You can read my earlier post on Riad 72 here.
Click here to book a stay at this wonderful Riad.
Read my Marrakech highlights here.
We will be popping up at the fabulous Cotswolds Christmas Fair this year with our range of hand-woven blankets and throws, stunning Moroccan wedding blankets and beautiful hand embroidered cushions.
The fair is at Daylesford organic farm in Kingham and is in support of WellChild, the national charity for sick children. There will be 180 stands featuring a wonderful range of homeware, jewellery, childrenswear, toys, Christmas decorations and gifts plus free workshops and cookery demonstrations.
Dates and times
6th November: 6pm – 9.30pm
7th and 8th November: 9.30am – 4pm
Click here for ticket information and directions.
I attended a ChildHope presentation in the summer and I wanted to share with you the work they are doing with Kenyan NGO, Pendekezo Letu, to rescue young street connected girls in Nairobi’s slums and help them into mainstream education.
There are an estimated 60,000 children* living and working on the streets in Nairobi. Life in the city’s slum settlements is one of extreme poverty and deprivation. Slum dwellers lack access to basic services such as water, sanitation and healthcare and levels of unemployment and violent crime are high. Sarah Mbira, the Director of Pendekezo Letu, explained how they are helping young girls, aged 6 to 13, living and working in the slum settlements, who are the most vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.
Every year PKL helps one hundred girls. The girls are found by social workers begging, working on the streets or scavenging on refuse sites where they are exposed to toxic fumes, dangerous waste and abuse. Girls like 12-year-old, Linit, who with her grandmother, was struggling to support a family of six. She was working ten hours a day in hazardous conditions collecting plastic and glass on a dump site and earning just 25p. When a team from Comic Relief, which funds this project, visited her at home they discovered it was the first time Linit and her family had eaten in two days.
Linit has now been enrolled on PKL’s intensive ten-month programme at their rehabilitation centre. She will be provided with remedial education, three meals a day, healthcare, life skills and counselling. It’s a safe environment where she can laugh, learn and be a child again. After the 10-month period she will be enrolled in a mainstream primary school and rejoin her grandmother and the rest of the family.
Many of the children PKL works with have ended up working on the streets due to parental unemployment and illness. Whilst they are on the rehabilitation programme PKL works with their family members to improve their health, wellbeing and economic status so they can support their children. They provide training and loans to enable them to start a small business or vocational training, like carpentry, hairdressing and sewing.
Sara told us about two girls, Nadia and Saara, aged 11 and 9, who social workers found ten years ago struggling to support a family of eight. Both their parents were suffering from AIDS and were too weak to stand. The girls were giving any food they managed to buy to their parents and were malnourished and traumatized by their parents’ suffering. They were enrolled on PKL’s ten month programme and the parents were provided with medical help, food supplements and small business training. Today both girls are studying at university and the parents are running a small greengrocers.
ChildHope and Pendekezo Letu have been working together for nineteen years and have helped 1,779 young girls and their families escape a life of poverty. You can find out more about this life changing, project, the work of ChildHope and how you can get involved here.
The Ben Youssef Madrasa was the largest Islamic theological college in Morocco. It was founded in the 14th century by the Marinid Sultan Abu al-Hassan and further developed by Sultan Abdallah al-Ghalib in the 16th century in order to rival the madrasas of Fez.
It’s a wonderful example of Moorish architecture, with its carved Atlas cedar windows and wooden lattice screen balconies, five colour zellij tiling, stucco designs on the walls and a marble mihrab, which indicated the direction of Mecca.
The main courtyard (below) is breathtakingly ornate and features a large filled basin of shallow water in the centre. The college is no longer in use but there were once students residing in the 132 dorm rooms arranged around the courtyard. In stark contrast to the inscriptions and patterned stucco and colourful tiling on the exterior walls the dorm rooms are small and spartan (final photograph).
My advice is to visit the Ben Youssef Madrasa when it opens at 8am before it gets too busy and before the sun becomes too bright to take photos of the courtyard. Click here for directions.
If you visit the Madrasa I also recommend that you visit the Maison de la Photographie and see the wonderful collection of old photos of Morocco as it is nearby. Click here for directions.
For other suggestions on what to see and do in Marrakech click on Morocco on the right hand side of this blog.
Vintage Moroccan wedding blankets, also known as handira or tamizart, have been popular with interior designers and stylists for some time. The neutral colour palette of the blankets makes them an extremely versatile addition to a bedroom or sitting room. They add elegance, texture, pattern, glamour and sparkle and can be used in a variety of ways: as a coverlet or footer on a bed, over the back of a sofa or a chair, as a stylish headboard, a casual throw or as a wall hanging. Have a look at the Pinterest board below for some ideas on how you can use wedding blankets in your home. Scroll down the Pinterest board with your mouse to see all the images.
There are different types wedding blanket in Morocco. The cream and white variety comes from the mid Atlas mountains where they are hand-woven by the mother of the bride and her female relatives in preparation for her wedding day. They are woven from local wool and cotton in a natural palette of cream and white and can take several weeks or months to complete. Each piece is unique and reflects the skill and creativity of the weaver. Many blankets feature bands of kilim weaving, sometimes concealed by cotton fringing on the front but visible on the back. These coloured kilim bands often contain talismanic symbols conveying the hopes of the bride’s mother for her future prosperity, fertility and happiness.
Each sequin is sewn on by hand. The sequins form small clusters or rows or both and are said to ward off the evil eye. It’s also possible that their similarity to small coins is intended to symbolise future wealth. They also reflect the light whether it’s the light of the fire in the evening or daylight sun.
The blankets are worn like capes either over the head or around the shoulders and tied at the neck. They are traditionally worn by the bride on her journey to her husband’s home. After the marriage they are used as bed or wall coverings to decorate the marital home.
Our stock of vintage Moroccan wedding blankets is constantly changing but you can see a selection below.
You can see our full range of vintage Moroccan wedding blankets here and our range of cushions from vintage Moroccan wedding blankets here. We think that as well as adding glamour to your home they would make a wonderful wedding present.
Tucked away behind 30 foot walls on Rue Mouassine in the Medina is Le Jardin Secret, Marrakech’s Secret Garden. It’s a place to escape the hustle and bustle of the medina and take refuge in the tranquil courtyard gardens of one of Marrakech’s largest and oldest riads.
There is evidence of a palace on the site of Le Jardin Secret dating back to the reign of Sultan Moulay ‘Abd-Allah al-Galib in the sixteenth century, however what you can see today is the reconstruction of a riad, which was built at the beginning of the nineteenth century by the leader of the Haha tribe, Kaid al-Hajj Ab-Allah U-Bihi. The kaid subsequently fell out of favour with the Sultan and was poisoned by him. The last inhabitant of the riad was watchmaker and Chamberlain to the Sultan, Mohammed Loukrissi. Loukrissi lived in the palatial compound with his three wives and children until his death in 1934. After his death ownership of the riad was divided up amongst his descendants and it fell into disrepair.
The riad was rediscovered by Lauro Milan, the owner of Cafe Arabe, which stands opposite Le Jardin Secret, and his business partner, Sante Giovanni Albonetti. They were curious about what lay behind the imposing walls and discovered a shanty town of dwellings on the site of a nineteenth century palace. After lengthy negotiations with the 130 plus inheritors they purchased the site initially intending to build a hotel but once the shacks were removed and it became clear that this was a site of historical interest the decision was made to restore the riad and the gardens and create a visitor attraction.
Award winning gardener, Tom Stuart Smith, was responsible for the garden design and the planting in the two courtyard gardens. Both gardens adhere to the original nineteenth century layout but are very different from each other. The larger of the two, with its strict geometric structure and planting, remains faithful to the Islamic original whilst the smaller, Exotic garden, is a visual mix of sculptural and textural planting and bold bursts of colour using drought resistant plants which would not have been available in Morocco in the nineteenth century.
The layout of the Islamic garden follows a pattern called the Chahar bagh, meaning fourfold garden. The earliest example of this style of garden dates back to 500BC in Pasargadae in Iran where the four quarters of the garden were divided by irrigation channels. Initially this layout was developed to facilitate irrigation however with the rise of Islam in the 7th century this division of the garden into four sections came symbolically to represent the description of paradise in the Koran.
There are four essential elements to an Islamic garden: water for irrigation, which is viewed as a blessing from heaven, shade, the chahar bagh and enclosure; a space separated from the outside, a private paradise.
Staying true to the traditional design, the most important paths are tiled with terracotta bejmat tiles in a greenish turquoise glaze. The herringbone pattern and variations of green in the tiles create the illusion of running water.
In an Islamic garden the planting as well as the garden layout follows a strict format. The most important trees are the fig, the olive, the date palm and the pomegranate, all of which have religious significance. Tom Stuart Smith has added sweet orange, lemon and argan trees to the mix and planted rosemary, grasses, lavender, jasmine, tuberose, damask rose, musk rose, Turkish tea sage and grape-vine beneath the trees to create a meadow effect.
The pavilions surrounding the Islamic garden have been reconstructed using 19th century techniques. The larger of the two pavilions the Oud el Ward(above), named after one of Loukrissis’ wives features a room with a dome or qubba, which was designed for Loukrissi to receive guests and a 17m tower. The tower, which is the height of many of the mosque minarets, and the qubba both indicate Loukrissi’s status as does the private hammam which is to the side of the garden. If you visit make sure to visit the tower as the views from it extend over the city to the Atlas mountains.
The restored riads feature hand sculpted plasterwork, traditional tadelakt walls and ornate painted wooden ceilings and doors.
Originally water for the gardens would have come from the Atlas mountains to Marrakech via an underground system of tunnels known as khettaras developed by the Almoravids in the eleventh century. The water flowed from the mountains to huge tanks in the Agdal and Menara gardens and from there via gravity to the mosques, public water fountains and hammams in the city. The khettara system hasn’t been in use since the 1950s so an existing well was redug in one corner of the garden and supplies the water for both gardens. The rills and paths and irrigation channels are set above the planted level of the garden so that water can spill over and irrigate the gardens.
Decorative benches are placed by the fountains so that you can sit, listen to the trickle of water and the birdsong and enjoy the serenity and calm of this elegant garden.
Walk into the Le Jardin Secret from Rue Mouassine and your senses are immediately awakened by the trickle of water along irrigation channels and overspilling from fountains, the modern Moroccan architecture, the birdsong and the splashes of colour, and textural and sculptural designs of the planting in the Exotic garden. The Exotic garden is the smaller of the two gardens and contains plants from Mexico, South Africa, Brazil, Bolivia, Madagascar, the Canary Islands, Australia and Mediterranean countries. The plants are all from semi-arid climates like Morocco and are drought resistant to minimize the need for water.
The new pavilion was built on the foundations of an earlier structure but there was no evidence of the riad so the design is modern. This pavilion provides the concealed entrance to the Islamic garden so you walk from a modern garden with dramatic shapes, texture and pops of colour through to an elegant, structured garden in calming shades of green accompanied by the calming sound of running water.
A spiky Ceiba tree from South America stands out against the slate grey backdrop of the modern reception building.
Le Jardin Secret provides insight into the design, beauty and symbolism of an Islamic garden, the lives of the wealthy in Marrakech in the nineteenth century and the development of Marrakech as a city. It delights with its contrasting courtyard gardens, juxtaposing traditional and modern planting schemes and old and new architecture. If you are planning to visit my advice is to get there early in the day so that you can appreciate the sights before the crowds arrive.
It can be difficult to navigate the labyrinth of alleys in the medina however, Le Jardin Secret is situated in Rue Mouassine, which is one of the larger thoroughfares. It is not far from the Mouassine mosque and is opposite the Cafe Arabe so if you ask in the medina for either of those two landmarks you should find it. I recommend visiting early in the morning and taking a guided tour. If you are interested in gardens and gardening I also recommend Tom Stuart-Smith’s fascinating guide, which I have referred to for this post.
“This show could cause design lovers a cardiac arrest.” Grand Designs
We are excited to be exhibiting again at the Midcentury Modern Show in Dulwich College, London, on Sunday 19th March. The show is one of our favourites. It’s a mix of the best in 20th century design classics and modern collectables. If you love Scandinavian and American modernism, European Bauhaus, British, French and German industrial design then this is the venue for you. There are 85 dealers at this design destination so you can source the latest furniture, textiles, ceramics and gifts and find yourself an original mid century piece.
We will be exhibiting our range of contemporary and vintage handcrafted textiles and baskets in stand 8 in the Upper Gallery and look forward to meeting you there.
We are giving away a pair of tickets to the show on a first come first served basis. All you have to do is email us at: info@maudinteriors.com with the name and email address of the two people you would like to attend the show. Please note there is no cash substitute for this giveaway.
‘Midcentury Modern is a dangerous show. All the must-see vintage furniture, lighting and accessories dealers in one place makes for serious temptation. Lucy and Petra organise the shows with their idiosyncratic verve and energy and in atmospheric locations so the events feel like an occasion / day out and not just a shopping experience.’ Jenny Dalton. Freelance. How To Spend It. Financial Times.
Click here for more information on the Midcentury Modern shows.
Please note tickets have now been allocated.
The Fashion and Textile museum in London is currently holding the first UK exhibition of the work of Josef Frank (1885 – 1967), who is considered to be one of Sweden’s most influential designers. Bold, vibrant, botanical prints characterise the work of the architect, designer and artist and his colourful take on modernism is on trend today. The above room set, from the Josef Frank exhibition with its botanical prints and greenery, wouldn’t be out of place in a contemporary interiors magazine.
Frank was born in Austria and studied architecture in Vienna. He founded his own practice after the First World War and established Haus & Garten, a design and furnishings company. He left Austria in 1933 to escape Nazi discrimination and moved to Sweden. Unable to find work as an architect he was approached by Estrid Ericson, the founder of the internationally renowned interior design company, Svenskt Tenn, who admired his designs and asked him to work for the company. This was the start of a working relationship, which lasted 30 years.
Frank believed that a home should be a comfortable, cosy place to live and his designs injected a pop of colour into the Swedish modernist movement. The uplifting effect of the vibrant colours and botanical designs bursting with insects and birds was in stark contrast with the mood and turmoil of the interwar and Second World War.
The exhibition features over 120 of Frank’s designs and include a large selection of his watercolours. These are some of my favourites:
One of Frank’s earliest designs, Fruhling 1925 – 30, a delicate block print with deep red tree trunks and blue leaves.
An illustration for Frank’s design,Window (1943-45), depicting common plants.
My favourite, Rox and Fix (1943 – 45), featuring hills inspired by Chinese ink paintings and large fig trees.
One of Frank’s vibrant designs, Mirakel (1925-30).
Josef Frank’s designs are still in production at Svenskt Tenn. You can see more of his work here.
The Josef Frank exhibition is at the Fashion and Textile museum in London until 7th May 2017.
The Seeking Africa exhibition, at Themes and Variations on Westbourne Grove in London, is one of the first exhibitions in the UK to focus on the variety of contemporary design from Africa. The exhibition has been cleverly curated to give a glimpse of what is happening in different countries via chosen artists. Themes range from pollution and the effects on the environment, reflected in photography and furniture from recycled oil drums, to story telling through basket weaving.
The basket weaving drew my attention as two of the baskets are from a series of three Biography Baskets. These Biography baskets are part of the Song of the Weaver project, created by three generations of weavers: grandmother, daughter and granddaughter from one family who work for social enterprise, Gone Rural, in Swaziland. Each of the baskets in the series captures the memories of the lives of the weaver through grasses and objects found on their homesteads.
The basket above is by Siphiwe Mngometulu, the daughter of the trio, who is the head of her homestead. Siphiwe left school after falling pregnant and began weaving to support her child. Together Siphiwe and her husband had six more children building a life together at his homestead. Then one day her husband sold all their cattle and left. He did not return for four years.
Siphiwe had to leave her husband’s family homestead but with her income from Gone Rural she was able to start her life again, building a new house and buying animals but she has yet to regain her herd of cattle. This is her ultimate dream. Her husband now visits a few times a year. Her basket is a visual memoir of her life. Woven from grasses and collected objects, there are memories embedded in every strand of the basket. Like the bone, which signifies that Siphiwe is the backbone of her family. The goat skull and metal disc are reminders of her husband as Siphiwe always slays a goat when he returns home and the disc symbolises her husband’s return by bicycle. The numerous layers of grasses symbolise the years of Siphiwe’s life (some fertile and some dry).
The basket above is by Bonakele Ngwenya, Siphiwe’s first-born daughter. Like her mother she left school at 16 when she became pregnant. She was sad to have to leave school but happy to have a daughter. Bonakele learnt how to weave from her mother and joined Gone Rural to support her child. Her basket is very different in style from her mother’s. The use of pink symbolises her love for her daughter and the metal loops represent her husband’s unstable employment. The depressed base is her sadness at having to leave school and the zig zag patterns on the top of the basket allude to the style of basket she normally weaves for Gone Rural and her prayer for more work in the future.
Another Gone Rural basket, from a different collection, woven from recycled fabric and plastic covered grasses and copper wire.
Also part of the Seeking Africa exhibition were two striking baskets by Beauty Ngxongo from Zululand. Functional, beautiful and decorative, Zulu baskets are some of the most collectable in the world. The ones above are tightly woven from ilala palm, so tightly woven that the they are watertight. I particularly like the earthy mix of colours and striking patterns in these baskets.
The Seeking Africa exhibition runs until 16th December but hurry if you want to see everything as the exhibits are for sale and are selling fast. Learn more at Themes and Variations, 231 Westbourne Grove, London.
The background information on the Biography Baskets is from Gone Rural. Find out more about social enterprise Gone Rural here and click here to see our selection of baskets from Gone Rural.
