Object of Desire

Maryam sells these exquisite vintage wedding blankets directly from Morocco. These blankets are Berber. They are wooly because they were meant to keep the bride warm and she wore one as a cape as she was walking to her husband's new house. They were made by hand in the bride's family by the women in the family - you can only imagine the amount of work. All that sequin work takes a lot of time and so this was reserved for the best and most important day - the wedding.

All blankets are hand loomed sheep's wool with cotton bushy fringe. All sequins are painstakingly added one by one by hand. These are not replica Moroccan wedding blankets - they are genuine vintage items, sourced high in the Atlas mountains in Berber villages and made for Berber brides. All blankets were made in homes and are thought to be instilled with "baraka." Baraka is a positive power with many meanings in Morocco, and is a source of creative inspiration. In the case of carpets and weavings, the religious faith of the weaver and her belief in the supernatural are inextricably connected with the objects she produces. The loom itself remains the ultimate symbol of magical protection. It is looked upon as a living thing and is treated as such. If the weaver takes care in remembering the number and combination of threads to produce a design, the finished textile will be imbued with talismanic power and contain baraka, acting as a "power shield" against the evil eye.