Boucherouite is not a design tradition. It is what happened when the wool ran out.

The word is Moroccan Arabic, bu sherwit, a piece torn from used clothing. Through the twentieth century the households of the Atlas kept sheep and wove with the fleece, and as herding gave way to settled farming and wage work the fleece stopped coming. Women went on weaving anyway, on the same looms with the same knot, using whatever was in the house. The pile of this one is corduroy, denim, knitted jersey, chiffon, satin ribbon, checked shirting and printed cotton, every strip cut from a garment. The foundation underneath is cotton and the ends are finished in a flat-woven band with a plied wool fringe, which is how a proper rug is finished.

They began on the plains around Beni Mellal and Boujad in the nineteen sixties and seventies and reached the Berber areas of the Middle and High Atlas from about 1990. Nobody made them to sell. They were made because a floor needed covering and there was nothing else, and because the woman at the loom had an idea about colour.

Somebody has since sewn a channel across the back at the top so it can hang from a rod, and done it carefully. It comes with its turned wooden hangers.