Berber Arts and Crafts

BERBER ARTS AND CRAFTS

The Berber people have a unique type of arts and crafts. Some designs have been handed down generation to generation providing an important part of their culture. The Berber people make jewelry and carpets as well as other types of arts and crafts. With different symbols, colors, designs, and dyes, each Berber tribe has its own personality shown through the workmanship.

Jewelry plays a very important part in the lives of women. If women have only one piece jewelry or less they are considered poor. Heavy earrings are hung by chains on a headpiece or wrapped around the ears due to their weight. Other jewelry includes bulky bracelets, pendants, old coins, and the “Hand of Fatima” that is believed to have good luck, and ward off evil and sickness. Women mainly wear, silver, turquoise, and amber, in their day to day jewelry. Although women normally wear jewelry, some men do as well.

Each Berber carpet is special and unique; one carpet is not the same as another. Only women make carpets, and once their daughter is around age seven, she teaches them how to make carpets, along with designs. This is a tradition but is quickly fading away because daughters are becoming restless, and impatient, when learning how to make the carpets. Every tribe has their own designs and colors: the Zumor tribe in Khemisset uses red and white, the Beni M’Guild tribe in Azrou uses black and white, the Beni Warin uses red, white and a little bit of yellow. A natural carpet color is cream or brown, they use the wool from sheep to make the carpets, and then go through multiple steps to complete it. To make the carpet and their designs, they either use a loom to weave or tie knots. There are four main symbols: headdress, eye, horn, and mountains. When making designs, these four symbols can be combined together to have a more complex look. Natural dyes have been used for color: indigo for blue, saffron for yellow and orange, and pomegranate fruit along with henna for a red color. Today more tribes have started to use a chemical dye; this might stop the Berbers from using the old way of dyes.

Why should we keep Berber arts and crafts? I think we should keep Berber arts and crafts for three main reasons. First, it is a unique art specific to the Berbers. Second, the crafts can be sold in order to receive money for basic needs in their family’s life. Third, if Berbers lose their arts and crafts then part of their culture will be lost along with it, and part of the Berbers as individuals will also be lost. In a way, we will also be losing something too, a part of somebody’s history and past lost. From their arts and crafts, we will be able to find out more about their culture and people. We could associate the natural dyes the Berbers use to the natural environment; their symbols to their way of life; and learn what was most important to them. If we lose the Berber arts and crafts, it will be gone forever and we can’t get it back.