First Edition of the Moroccan Crafts Fair

From December 13th to 16th Casa Árabe’s garden hosted the first edition of the Moroccan Crafts Fair, a special souk which gathered craftsmen from several points of that country to exhibit live how they handle the different materials.

During the fair this craftsmen showed how they worked on wood (with incrustations or paintings); pieces of cloth (which most relevant examples were kaftans), but included also pottery, ceramics, forge, wicker, silversmith’s craft and leather goods. All the artists’ creative process could be watched by the public: from raw materials and tools they use, to the final touch, paying attention to different techniques.

Fair was open from Thursday to Saturday, 10.00 to 20.00, and Sunday December 16th from 10.00 to 16.00.

This arts and crafts fair is framed within the ‘Morocco in Spain (2012)’ program, an initiative of the Three Cultures Foundation of the Mediterranean and the Ministry of Moroccans Residing Abroad, aimed to make audience closer to the cultural richness of this country through a varied activity program which includes concerts, workshops, speeches, exhibitions, cinema screenings, crafts fairs, kaftan catwalks and book launches. There were two previous initiatives: Morocco in Three Cultures (2010) and Morocco in Andalusia (2011). This current edition widened considerably the scope of the previous ones, due to the number of events as well to the geographic diversity of the spaces where it took place.

Among the events included on this season there were kaftan fashion shows in Madrid and Barcelona, with designs by Mohamed Larbi Azzouz, alias Romeo, the first edition of the Moroccan Crafts Fair and lessons of Spanish for Moroccans living in Andalusia, an educational initiative which would be supplemented by classic Arabic lessons for the Moroccan inhabitants of Andalusia.