i. Four schools, one gesture

Moroccan pottery spans the whole country, but four cities concentrate its identity: Safi, Fès, Salé, Tamegroute. Each has its own clay, oxides, motifs and forms. All share double firing: a first pass bakes the clay, a second sets the glaze.

ii. Safi, capital of faience

On the Atlantic coast, 250 km south of Casablanca, Safi's Potters' Hill has gathered dozens of kilns and workshops for a century. The double-firing technique is central: the clay is first modelled and thrown then fired — the "biscuit" comes out white —; it is then painted with oxides (cobalt, manganese, copper) and glazed, then fired again. The second firing glazes the surface.

Safi produces most of the decorative tagines sold to tourists, but also high-quality vases, dishes, ashtrays and salad bowls. Safi's emblem is the white-and-blue glazed bowl with floral motifs, a legacy of Arab-Andalusian influences.

iii. Fès, cobalt blue

Fès blue is one of the most recognisable visual marks of Moroccan ceramics. On an opacifying white (tin) glaze, the artisan traces geometric motifs in cobalt mixed with calligraphic inscriptions. Dishes, jars, water jugs, trays. Fès blue also accompanies zellige: it is found in fountains and friezes.

iv. Tamegroute, copper green

18 km south of Zagora, in the Drâa valley, the village of Tamegroute is home to a school unique in Morocco. The pottery is fired with a copper-oxide glaze, giving a deep, irregular green ranging from jade to turquoise. The pieces are deliberately rustic — uneven edges, uneven glaze. They have become one of the aesthetic markers of contemporary Mediterranean design.

v. Salé, the beldi tagine

While nearly every Moroccan family owns a tagine, most painted ones are decorative objects. The real cooking tagine — the beldi tagine — is undecorated, in raw, unglazed clay, sometimes banded with iron. Salé was long its main producer. Heat rises slowly and evenly, the conical lid condenses the steam: the thermal genius of an object at least a thousand years old.

vi. On the wheel

The gesture is almost universal: a ball of clay on the wheel, damp palms, the slow rise of the cylinder, widening, forming the neck. But in Tamegroute the potter often works seated on the ground, the wheel turned by foot. In Safi, work is done standing, on electric wheels. Kilns are wood-fired, sometimes still with olive pits or camel dung, fed from outside. Firing lasts eight to sixteen hours.