atlas mountains

Berber rugs from the Beni Ouarain region

June 27, 2011

Berber rugs from the Beni Ouarain region

The impulse in Berber rug-making to both interrupt and also loosely maintain a pattern seems unique in traditional textiles. If not unique, then it’s hard to name a tradition that equals Berber mastery of this particular tension.

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Berber rugs, the art of a “people from between somewhere and nowhere.”

October 8, 2008

Berber rugs, the art of a “people from between somewhere and nowhere.”

Le Corbusier, Marcel Breuer, Alvar Aalto and Arne Jacobsen used these rugs regularly in their interiors, which is not surprising. Their unusual combination of minimalism and handmade detail, restraint and inventiveness works well with modernism’s aesthetics by both echoing the abstract geometry of the architecture and also counterbalancing that austerity with some softness.

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