Our roots
A HISTORY OF MEDITERRANEAN FURNITURE
Three thousand years of clay, wood and light. And why ROOTS EDITIONS still designs this way.
Manifesto
Mediterranean furniture is not a style. It is an answer.
An answer to the sun, which demands shade and coolness. To the sea, which gives salt and wind. To the land, which offers clay, olive, cedar, stone. For centuries, around this basin, objects were made to live outdoors, eat together and last.
This page tells that journey, from the first jar to the contemporary home, and explains why every ROOTS EDITIONS piece is its heir.
Antiquity
Clay, first.
Before wood there was clay. Phoenician and Roman jars, thrown, sun-dried, fired with wood, kept oil, grain and water. Their shape has barely changed in three thousand years: a belly, a neck, two handles.
Our terracotta jars and vases descend from them. Same gesture, same clay, same slow firings in the kilns of Tamegroute.
Material
Terracotta
Gesture
Wheel and wood kiln
At ROOTS
Decoration, Outdoor
What remains
A jar is never decorative. It has been useful for three thousand years, and beautiful because useful.
Middle Ages
Wood and geometry.
With Andalusia and the Maghreb, furniture learns geometry. Atlas cedar is carved, joined without nails, surfaces fill with patterns. Chests, benches and doors tell of a culture of shade and patios.
Our Marrakech cabinetmakers still work cedar and walnut with those joints. We kept the structure and removed the ornament.
Material
Cedar, walnut
Gesture
Nail-free joinery
At ROOTS
Furniture
Rural life
Wool and linen.
In the mountains and countryside, from the Atlas to Crete, people weave. Knotted rugs, blankets, cushions: thick textiles for cold nights, woven by women on vertical looms, with patterns passed on without drawings.
Our rugs come from those High Atlas villages. Wool carded, spun, washed in spring water, knotted by hand. Four weeks for one piece.
Material
Wool, linen
Gesture
Vertical loom
At ROOTS
Rugs and textiles
The materials of the Mediterranean
What the basin gives us.
20th century
Modernism in the sun.
In the twentieth century, architects rediscover the Mediterranean. White walls, terraces, simple lines: modernism settles in Ibiza, in Greece, on the Moroccan coast. Furniture becomes low, light, open to the outdoors.
That is the heritage our Casablanca studio continues: contemporary curves, right proportions, and always the materials from here.
Period
1930 to today
Idea
Simple lines, terraces
At ROOTS
All collections
Today
ROOTS EDITIONS, the heritage continues.
0 years
of gestures passed on
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partner workshops
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handmade in Morocco
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design studio, Casablanca
In pictures
From the workshop to the living room.
Our collections
Live the Mediterranean, at home.
Atlas, Essaouira, Terracotta. Three universes, one heritage, made in Morocco.
Discover the collections