The Textile Museum Journal: "Designing Without Design” in Sirwa Weaving Communities of Southern Morocco
As part of our online interview series for The Textile Museum Journal, contributing scholar Myriem Naji explores “designing without design” in the Sirwa weaving communities of southern Morocco.
In this online discussion, Dr. Naji questions the idea that carpets must be designed with precise and prescriptive representational devices. Using an approach that highlights knowledge, creativity and hands-on making, Dr. Naji focuses on ways that weavers create without knot plans, cartoons or other tools to guide their work — instead using their bodies, materials and social surroundings. Her insights are based on ethnographic fieldwork with several Tashelhit-speaking Amazigh weaving communities in the Sirwa Mountains.
About The Textile Museum Journal
Our peer-reviewed journal is the leading publication for the exchange of textile scholarship in North America. Published each fall, it features research on the cultural, technical, historical and aesthetic significance of textiles from all around the world. Learn more about the journal
About Myriem Naji
Myriem Naji is an honorary research fellow in the Department of Anthropology at University College London, where she earned a Ph.D. in 2008. In 2011, she curated the exhibition Weaving the Threads of Livelihood: The Aesthetic and Embodied Knowledge of Sirwa Weavers at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS University of London. Her current project, for which she received an Endangered Material Knowledge Programme grant, aims to research textile knowledge systems in Morocco. Dr. Naji is a member of the Early Textile Society Group, the Centre for the Anthropology of Technics and Technodiversity, and a founding member of the Under the Carpet Collective.
How to Participate
This program will take place on Zoom. To participate, please register online, and we will email you a link and instructions for joining. Simply follow that link at the time the program starts (12 p.m. EST / 9 a.m. PST). When you register, you can also request to receive a reminder email one day before the program with the link included.
About the Series
In this virtual series, authors who contributed to volume 51 of The Textile Museum Journal discuss new research on historical textiles. Browse all interviews