Awal — The Word | Azilal Rug | Multicolour on Ivory | 200 × 300 cm
This rug does not have a single sentence. It has many voices. Across its ivory field, signs appear one after another — small, large, precise, improvised, isolated, paired. Some seem to answer one another. Others interrupt the rhythm. Nothing occupies the centre for long. The eye does not follow a path through this rug. It listens. Awal — The Word In Tamazight, awal means word, speech, language, voice. It is the unit of meaning that precedes the sentence — the mark that carries significance before it is assembled into a message. This rug can be read as a vocabulary rather than a sentence. Its signs do not resolve into one fixed message. They accumulate, repeat, contrast and answer one another. A small blue form appears near a larger red one. A black sign is echoed several times across the field. A geometric figure returns in another colour, slightly altered. The vocabulary is shared. The composition is personal. What the weaver says with it belongs to her. The Rug Hand-knotted in the Middle Atlas, Morocco, by a single Amazigh weaver working without a fixed pattern. The signs — anthropomorphic figures, diamonds, arrows, X-forms, outlined rectangles, crosses, zigzags — are placed freely across the ivory ground, each with its own territory, its own colour, its own scale. The palette is vivid and deliberate: red, cobalt blue, yellow ochre, teal, brown, pink on natural ivory. No two signs are identical. No two are placed the same way twice. The composition was improvised directly on the loom, sign by sign, until the field was full. 200 × 300 cm. One of a kind. Why We Chose This Rug Among the many scatter-composition Azilal rugs we encounter, most are built around a dominant colour or a recurring central motif. This one is different. It has no centre. No hierarchy. Each sign occupies its own space with equal authority. The more you look, the more you find — a form you had not noticed, a colour that echoes one three rows above, a sign that seems to respond to another across the field. It is one of the most compositionally complex pieces in our collection. And it rewards close attention as much as it commands presence from across the room. Symbolism Awal — The Word The signs do not need to be translated individually to become meaningful together — the rug is a vocabulary, not a dictionary The anthropomorphic figures — forms that suggest a body, a posture, a gesture — are among the oldest marks in Amazigh visual culture, present in rock art, tattoos and textiles for millennia The space between the signs is as composed as the signs themselves — each mark has its own visual territory, its own breathing room The variation in scale — some signs large and assertive, others small and almost whispered — creates a rhythm that is closer to speech than to pattern Read the Weave Every Amazigh rug can be admired. This one can also be read. Our curatorial reading explores the visual language behind Awal through three ideas: The Word, The Space Between and The Echo. Explore Reading the Weave →