Le Corbusier, Marcel Breuer, Alvar Aalto and Arne Jacobsen used these rugs regularly in their interiors, which is not surprising. The rugs have an unusual combination of minimalism and handmade detail, restraint and inventiveness that works well with modernism’s aesthetics by echoing the abstract geometry and also counterbalancing the austerity with some softness . The Berber people – women, actually – of the Atlas and Rif Mountains of Morocco produce these amazing talismanic and practical carpets with graphic patterns that seem to highlight the relationship between form and nothingness by repeating and then gradually disappearing or unravelling. The names of dialects, places and tribes in the regions where the rugs are produced also highlight the strange, shifting interplay of foreground and background – the name of one tribe translates as “people from between somewhere and nowhere.” There’s something moving about this willingness to give up a degree of control, both in terms of craft and philosophy, and to defy order while also maintaining it.

Rugs from the Beni Ourain people of the Middle Atlas Mountains and Azila in the Rif Mountains are among the most prized. Corbusier commissioned custom Berber rugs from these regions for his buildings.

An Italian dealer posted these photos on his beautiful website last year, but sadly it seems the site has been taken down. For excellent info on Berber rugs, see the Berber Arts website as well as the essay below.

House by Corbusier, with Berber rug:

From the Axis Gallery page on their Berber rug exhibition (see their photo collection):

“Berber carpets do not fit the stereotype of African art. Like much African art, however, these rectangular compositions woven by Moroccan women are religious works designed to repel negative spiritual powers. Also, like African sculpture, they influenced such masters of modernism as Matisse and Klee, and played a key role in interiors designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Marcel Breuer, Alvar Aalto, Arne Jacobsen, and Charles and Ray Eames. To Modernism’s pared-down interiors and abstract art, the restrained markings and subtle color shifts on luxurious, deep-pile woolen Berber carpets imparted human warmth and the trace of the human hand.

For their nomadic makers, however, the carpets provided physical and metaphysical protection. Carpets served as blankets, shielding Berber families against the elements, while their talismanic designs deflected evil and promoted fertility. These mystical intentions perhaps explain the surprising asymmetries of Berber designs, as if the lines were themselves nomadic, open to chance meanders and deviations, like the paths and folds of Atlas landscapes. Monochrome carpets, on the other hand, yield the subtle pleasures of a Mark Rothko painting, also meditative and, for many, transcendental. Such freedom of design, far removed from the repetitive patterns of urban carpets, strikes a chord with Berber identity. The tribes of the Middle Atlas speak Tamazight, literally “the language of the free,” and their tribe names can be equally evocative – one translates as “people from between somewhere and nowhere.” Their designs seem to similarly hover between being and dissolving.

… Few museums featuring African art include Berber carpets. A progressive exception is the new musée quai Branly in Paris, whose North African display includes Moroccan carpets collected in the early 1900s.”

Tags: aalto, atlas mountains, berber, black and white, carpet, corbusier, handmade, jacobsen, monochrome, moroccan, morocco, pile, rug, soft modernism, textiles, warm modernism

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