Moroccan interior decoration · Made by hand · Shipped worldwide
Glazed pottery from Tamegroute, cedar and thuya wood, doum-palm basketry and hand-cut zellige fassi. Turned, carved or woven by hand, available in several sizes, and quoted to your project. And if you have a design of your own, our workshops will make that instead.
Several sizes per reference. Price on request, answered within one working day.
Shipped to the European Union free of customs duty, with EUR.1 documentation.
Our story
My name is Nakil Youssef. I was born in Marrakech and I am twenty-six. Mâalem Craft is an inheritance I received incomplete, and decided to finish.
Craft was my grandfather's trade. What reached me is not the skill — I never learned to throw a pot or carve a panel, and I will not pretend otherwise. What reached me is the unfinished part: work of this quality, made here, sold for very little, and going nowhere.
Marrakech and Fes hold some of the finest clay, wood and metal work in the world, and almost none of it reaches the interiors that would pay it its true price.
A mâalem is a master craftsman — someone who can make a piece the same, six months later. That consistency is what turns a souk find into something a shop or an architect can actually order. Bring us a shape and we will make it.
The workshops
Wheel-thrown, wood-fired, glazed in the green and honey tones of the south. The glaze pools and varies from piece to piece: that irregularity is the signature, not a defect.
Thuya burl with its scent, Atlas cedar, walnut. Oiled and waxed, never varnished, so the wood can be revived rather than stripped.
Doum palm, raffia and wicker, split and dried before weaving. Light to ship, forgiving in transit, and no two pieces share the same grain.
Request a quote
No account, no login, no newsletter. Whether you run a shop, design interiors, or are furnishing your own home, you will get a price, an honest lead time and a freight cost to your address.
Something custom? Send us a photograph, a sketch or a reference image and our workshops will make it. See how custom work works.
Send your country and what you are looking for — photographs, sketches and drawings come through instantly. You get a straight answer on price, lead time and freight, usually the same day, always within one working day, Monday to Friday.
Collection six · Rugs
Hand-knotted wool from the Middle and High Atlas. Rugs are the second largest Moroccan craft export after pottery, and the single most requested item by the interior architects we talk to. They are also the one line where we cannot promise you an identical second piece — so we sell them differently, and we say so before you order.
Middle Atlas
Undyed ivory wool, charcoal lozenge pattern, deep pile. The one everyone asks for. Woven by Berber women on vertical looms, 3 to 6 weeks per piece.
High Atlas
Single-knot wool on a lighter ground, drawn freehand in vegetable and aniline dyes. No two are alike, which is precisely why designers specify them.
Plains & Rif
Flatweave, no pile, reversible. Lighter to ship and far cheaper to freight than a knotted rug — the practical entry into the category for a shop.
How we sell rugs, and why it is different.
Every other reference in this catalogue is reorderable: same weight, same gauge, same finish,
six months from now. A hand-knotted rug is not. Each one is a single piece, and the woman who
made it will never make exactly the same one again.
So we do not list rugs by reference. We photograph each piece individually, front and back,
with its true measurements and weight, and we send you a current selection with a hold of
seven days. What you see is what ships. If you need twelve matching rugs for a hotel, say so
at the start — that is a commissioned production of 10 to 16 weeks, not a stock order, and it
is priced differently.
Labelling and freight. Rugs entering the EU need a fibre composition label under the textile labelling regulation — we supply it, stating wool percentage and origin. Freight is by weight and volume: a 300×400 Beni Ouarain rolled is bulky, so we consolidate rugs with copper on the same pallet whenever the timing allows, which usually halves the cost per piece.
Collection seven · Wall panels
Not paintings. Framed panels made from what we already work: cut zellige, hammered copper and tooled leather, mounted on a hardwood frame with a concealed hanging rail. Made to order, in any size, and repeatable — which paintings are not.
3 formats
Hand-cut zellige laid in a traditional pattern on a rigid backing, walnut frame. The only way to put zellige on a wall without a tiler.
3 formats
A single sheet of copper, raised and chased by hand into a geometric relief, framed or left as a floating panel. Patinated, polished or blackened.
2 formats
Vegetable-tanned hide, hand-tooled with the same stamps used on saddlery, stretched on a frame. Develops a patina exactly like the bags.
Why panels and not art. We were asked for paintings. We are not going to sell you paintings, because buying original work from artists is a different trade with a different supply chain, and we would be a middleman adding nothing. What we can do is make wall pieces from the materials our workshops already master — and unlike a painting, we can make you eleven more of them for a hotel corridor, to the same specification.
Send us your company, your country and what you are looking for. You get the full wholesale price list and a straight answer on lead time and freight, usually the same day, always within one working day, Monday to Friday.
Trade enquiries only. We do not sell to consumers, and we will tell you so rather than waste your time.