ZILLIJ - MOROCCAN TILEWORK
Zillij Moroccan Mosaic Cermaic Tile DesignsIn The Caliph’s House: A Year in Casablanca author Tahir Shah recounts the vast adventure of buying an old mansion in the center of Casablanca, relocating his wife and young children from London to Morocco, and embarking on a vast, difficult and ultimately spiritual renovation of a great house. The pitfalls were great, varied and even comical, but the end result was a completely restored, tranquil environment that benefited from Shah’s dogged insistence that the house be restored to its original, if now virtual, glory.
The Caliph’s House: A Year in Casablanca
One of the highlights of the renovation was a fountain covered in tiles. One such tiling style is call zillij, a style and pattern of tiling that originated in the middle of the 11th Century. These tiles were present in multiple cities throughout Morocco and Spain and still can be seen today in Marrakech, Rabat and Seville. Zillij is created by a zlayji, or ceramic mosaicist, one who often comes from a family of mosaicists with the mosaic tradition stretching through five generations or more. To this day, zillij involves a heavy apprenticeship. Each zlayji or ceramicist must learn to hand cut every tile that goes into one of a hundreds of possible mosaic patterns.
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