The Garden OF STARS
Riad between Agadir and Taroudant, in southern Morocco
Holiday rental with a resident of Swiss nationality
Berber jewelry and objects workshop Boroba
It is a very little known place for shopping for trinkets and other authentic objects from the Berber villages of the Anti-Atlas. The Boroba workshop of Hamid Abdelrahmane is however worth the detour! Get there atabout forty minutes from our riad, to buy for example a typical necklace, it is the guarantee to spend a friendly moment discovering small treasures and to benefit from attractive prices.
Patron de l'atelier Boroba.
Ils assemblent les colliers de l'atelier Boroba.
Des perles et des symboles berbères qui deviendront des colliers superbes.
Ce n'est pas du chiqué !
Ils suivent de près les derniers canons de la mode, car commandés par des boutiques marocaines et européennes.
La berbérité portée à son paroxysme.
Le père de Hamid Abdelrahmane, d'origine saharaouie.
Plus authentique, tu meurs !
Couleurs vives, couleurs berbères !
The Boroba workshop is located in Ouled Terna, a small town betweenthe city of Taroudant AndTiout palm grove, in front of the Municipality. The latter is installed to the left of the road when coming from the Taroudant roundabout. If you can't find it, ask the neighborhood. There will always be someone to help you.
Berber treasures
The welcoming Hamid Abdelrahmane, who speaks good French and will insist on offering you a mint tea, has many strings to his bow.
His workshop is first and foremost the place where very fashionable costume jewelry is assembled, which mixes Berber symbols, resins and pearls. Most turn out to be orders from European and Moroccan traders.
Boroba also exhibits ethnic style jewellery, such as hands of Fatima, as well as objects of Tuareg origin. If you are lucky, you will also find Berber handbags, as colorful as they are authentic, dresses from villages in the nearby Anti-Atlas and, even rarer, Amazigh bridal attire decorated with magnificent embroidery.
wooden works
In the courtyard at the back of the workshop, workers are making wooden chests and doors. This is where it was createdthe frieze in seven languages which was envisaged for the Jardin aux Etoiles and which a memorable flood destroyed (see below). You can also obtain carved wooden objects in another workshop which is located north of Taroudant, in Tamaloukt.
The Abdelrahmane family originates from the former Spanish Sahara, which Morocco considers an integral part of the national territory.
A wooden frieze for our riad washed away by the weather
La frise envisagée comprenait aussi une appellation en latin.
Ce qu'aurait donné la frise en six langues sur la façade principale du riad.
La partie de la frise en caractères arabes.
Il ne restait que des débris.
Voici ce qui subsistait de l'inscription en latin.
Il a été installé dans la suite Tiznit.
Finally, also in view of the skepticism displayed by other Moroccan craftsmen regarding this project (but they had not thought of it and had never made such a frieze!), the idea was abandoned. Our frieze was therefore replaced by a copper panel affixed to the entrance to the villa, insidethe Souss gallery.
As for the money advanced to the Boroba workshop, it was used to buy a Berber chest in polychrome wood, made in Tamaloukt, which went to complete the furnishings ofthe Tiznit suite.
The idea was to create a painted wooden frieze that would have crossed the entire main facade of our riad, to announce the name of the Jardin aux Etoiles not only in French, but also in cina other languages: English, German, Arabic, Berber (Tachelhit) and Latin. The model above shows the project, whose objective of universality was obvious.
Hamid Abldelrahmane was commissioned to carry out this work. Its Ouled Terna workers were already well advanced in their work when the bad weather at the beginning of 2010 destroyed everything as torrents of water swept over the open-air workshop in Boroba. As our photos above show, the work done has come to naught.