Moroccan Pottery Grudge Match

Safi platter from the late-19th century

In 1905, Alfred Charmetant of the Lyon Chamber of Commerce, completed a report for the French Commission de Colonisation on the economic prospects for French control of Morocco. His findings were part of a wide and diffuse system of knowledge production undertaken by French private citizens, military officials, and academics in the decades leading up to colonial rule in 1912. Edmund Burke's forthcoming book, The Ethnographic State: France and the Invention of Moroccan Islam, looks at this in greater detail, but while we anxiously await its release, we draw attention to a passage from Charmetant's report, Mission Économique au Maroc. 

Charmetant went one-by-one through Moroccan port cities, noting the annual value of their port traffic, their accessibility to markets of the interior, and the main aspects of their industry. While writing about Safi, an Atlantic port approximately 150 kilometers west of Marrakesh, Charmetant weighed in on an age-old Moroccan debate: which city makes the best pottery? Charmetant quite clearly came down in the Fassi camp: "There is very little industry in Safi. Only glazed pottery is well reknown, and they are much more crudely painted than those made in Fes."

Safi's pottery tended to play second fiddle to that of Fes. Victor Piquet's 1917 report, Le Maroc: géographie, histoire, mise en valeur,  discussed native artisan industries in detail, but glossed over Safi's pottery in favor of the "very special character" of Fes (for which he also noted its distinctive blue color). Henri Dugard's Le Maroc de 1919 failed to mention other pottery industries but talked only of the "curious glazed pottery" of Safi," while Georges Paquot highlighted only the pottery of Fes as one of the city's "most original industries." To some extent, Safi still holds a second tier status today, if only by virtue of its distance from the typical circuits touristiques. 

Fes platter, with fish-scale motif.

As any good faux guide will tell you, three Moroccan cities are known for their pottery production. Salé, across the Bou Regreg from Rabat, is known for its functional, clay-brown pottery. The trademark pottery of Fes is characterized by intricate designs painted in blue and white; the "fish-scale" and floral designs particularly popular. Safi, by contrast, traditionally produces the most colorful pieces of the three, combining lots of yellows, greens, and pale reds into its designs. 

Although nowadays its more common to find ceramics of all sorts of colors and styles produced everywhere, but there remains a strong association of pottery-producing cities with a particular style. Hamid Irbouh's work, Art in the Service of Colonialism: French Art Education in Morocco, 1912-1956, examines the process by which the French classified and systematized art production in the country. The French ethnographic project continued through the colonial period, as Irbouh demonstrates. He dispells the notion of French colonial officials that Moroccan artisanal production had been in crisis in the late nineteenth century. This idea led the French to map out what constituted "authentic" design and to mandate the use of those styles in newly established artisan centers.