The City of safi has a reputation for a long time as a home of a very ancient ceramic tradition..After the initial step, the Utilities pottery terracotta and rudimentary invoice, were metamorphosed into objects, in which the colors and decorative motifs compete with the elegance of the gables and access to functions related decorative to the city life, and some household uses.This transformation is effected through the use of coatings and enamels intended to ensure the sealing of containers and their ornamentation.This evolution of the pottery, to the islamic era including from the 12th century, is tied to reports that Safi maintains then with the capital of the Almohades, Marrakech, which she had become the main port.
It should be recalled that in Marrakech were the descendants of the ceramists Andalusians that Youssef Ben Tachfin would have come of Granada After his expedition in Andalusia. Also the safiots potters have they probably benefited from the know-how of these.At the end of the 12-th century, of the parts in the glazed pottery were manufactured on the spot. It was specially gourdes used by pilgrims from Safi toward Mecca, organized in a Brotherhood (the famous "Taîfa of Houjjaj" founded by the patron saint of the city Abou Mohamed Saleh at the end of the 12-th century). This Taifa seemed to particularly draw the local craftsmen and their heads the potters. The green Gourde was one of their distinctive signs to side of the Rosary, as well as the notes the "Al Minhaj Al Wadih".The old "Maâlems" we learn that the inhabitants of Safi already used in the 18th century of glazed tiles and green tiles to decorate some buildings, as evidenced by mosques and mausoleums whose construction date of this time.We would doubt that it manufactures to Safi as in Fez objects in Earth glazed since a very long time. But on the old potters of this locality, on their technical and production there has been no in-depth studies. Moreover, these enamelled pottery of the past are no longer found, apart from a few parts that could assign more than a hundred years and which are kept jealously by rare collectors or by the descendants of the Masters The ceramists of these times of age.If the ceramic industry took its rise at Safi in the 19th century, it is that it has benefited from the lesson of the Potters Fassis, them even influenced by the Andalusian artisans, who, driven out of Spain at the end of the 16th century, came to settle in Fez. The latter had brought new techniques.They had, by their talent, given to this activity a great prestige and had formed their innovations few disciples.According to the information that it has been possible to collect from the old "Maâlems safiots", this was Hadj Mohammed El Ghammaz, the amine of the Corporation of the potters, who did come to Safi, in the 18th century a descendant of these fassis ceramists. The history has retained the name of a certain Hadj Abdeslam Lengassi.
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