In the souks of Fez and Marrakesh, you once in a while walk alone. Businesspeople in these Moroccan urban communities become your friend guides, none more mindful than the carpet vendors. Shake one off, another is there. Abandon that one, and the first anticipates you again farther on: Please. Come. Sit. Have tea. Let me give you this, and this. Floor coverings are unrolled, flung down, six, twelve, one on another. Furthermore, a few, on the off chance that you can unclench sufficiently long to unwind and look, are delights.
Morocco has gotten especially known for fleece floor coverings made by semi-roaming Berbers. Herders and ranchers, these ancestral people groups truly avoided urban focuses, and their weaving mirrors their freedom. It is little affected by the old style balances of Middle Eastern models, running rather to rowdy, improvisatory styles, none more peculiar than the one featured in "Clothes to Richesse: Rugs From Morocco," a live-wire summer show at the Cavin-Morris Gallery in Chelsea.
The style being referred to is called boucherouite, (articulated boo-shay-REET) a word got from a Moroccan-Arabic expression for torn and reused garments. The floor coverings it portrays, made by ladies for residential use, are essentially minor departure from the unassuming cloth carpet, without the modesty. With their goofy examples and shocking hues, these family things turn dolled upward and prepared to party; they appear to be more appropriate for encircling than for stomping all over.
