Meknes Damascene Craft

Damascening is the inlaying of a soft precious metal into a harder base, and the technique - named for Damascus, where it was practised at a high level - reached Morocco and took root in Meknes, which is now effectively the only place in the country where it is still done. The method: a steel object is cut with fine crosshatching, the surface is blackened, and silver wire is laid into the grooves and hammered so that it keys into the roughened metal, then burnished flush, producing silver patterns on black - geometric interlace, calligraphy, arabesque. It is used on plates, boxes, jewellery, sword furniture and decorative panels. The number of workshops has fallen a long way and the craftsmen who remain are mostly older, which is the honest state of it; buying directly from a workshop rather than a shop is both cheaper and the thing that keeps it going.

What you actually see

• Silver into blackened steel - wire hammered into crosshatched grooves and burnished flush.
• A Damascus technique - surviving in Meknes and effectively nowhere else in Morocco.
• Interlace and calligraphy - the pattern vocabulary worked in silver on black.
• A shrinking trade - few workshops left and an ageing group of craftsmen.

When to go

October to April; weekday mornings when workshops are working. An hour or two.

Honest expectations

Workshops are few and can be hard to find - ask locally. Much of what is sold in tourist shops as damascene is machine-etched imitation. Genuine work is slow and priced accordingly. Craftsmen sell hard because the trade is under pressure.

Nearby

El Hedim square and the medina souks are close; Dar Jamai is on the square.