Crafts & Workshops 6 November 2026 8 min read
Essaouira's craft trades: who makes what, and how to tell real work from resale
Essaouira joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in 2019, and it was music that earned the title. In February 2026 the city picked up a second one, Best Creative Living Heritage Destination, awarded by the Creative Tourism Network out of 223 entries from 28 countries. The misunderstanding is a useful one: what the medina makes with its hands is not music. It is wood, fibre and thread, and above all it is thuya. We will not tell you what to buy, but which trades still live here, from which materials, at what pace, and how hand work shows itself. The potter and painted wood are covered in our guide to the pottery workshop and the city of artists article; the bookable workshops close this one.
Contents
- Ten trades, nineteen workshops: the official inventory
- Why thuya accounts for three quarters of the trade
- The black is not ebony: how to read a marquetry piece
- Four trays a week: the real pace of a workshop
- The trades hanging on a single workshop, and the two that are missing
- Where to watch them work, without being pushed to buy
- The four questions to ask before you pay
- Doing rather than watching: the workshops you can book
Ten trades, nineteen workshops: the official inventory
Morocco's crafts ministry publishes the make-up of the Integrated Crafts Complex of Essaouira, inaugurated by King Mohammed VI in January 2020. It is the single most useful document on Souiri craft, and almost nobody reads it: nineteen production and retail workshops, eight exhibition rooms, nineteen resident cooperatives, 3,396 m² over two floors, an 18 million dirham investment.
The interesting part is the breakdown. The ministry states how many workshops each trade receives, which makes it the only public ranking of local craft. One caveat: it describes the complex, not the whole medina. The marquetry cells built into the ramparts are not on the list, and that is where the city works hardest, as our piece on Essaouira in 2026 notes.
Thuya wood5
What it makes: Boxes, trays, tables, marquetry
Sewing and embroidery4
What it makes: Embroidered clothing and accessories
Silver jewellery2
What it makes: Silverwork
Raffia and basketry2
What it makes: Baskets, panniers, hats
Traditional weaving1
What it makes: Rugs, blankets, foutas
Argan products1
What it makes: Culinary and cosmetic oils
Artisan candles1
What it makes: Candles
Leatherwork1
What it makes: Bags, belts, babouches
Drazza1
What it makes: Handloom cloth
Carpets and hanbel1
What it makes: Knotted and flat woven rugs
Why thuya accounts for three quarters of the trade
Thuya, known locally as aâraâr, is a conifer nearly endemic to the Maghreb. Morocco holds 607,900 hectares of it, roughly 80 % of world reserves, well ahead of Algeria (143,000 ha) and Tunisia (30,000 ha). In Essaouira province alone it covers 96,521 hectares, 35 % of the provincial forest, second only to the argan tree.
The same survey, drawn from a national symposium held in Essaouira and reported by Aujourd'hui le Maroc, sizes the trade: thuya is said to make up three quarters of the city's craft activity, across some 6,740 artisans. The document carries no date, so treat both numbers as an order of magnitude. The proportion does not move: craft here means wood first.
And the tree grows slowly. A replanting of 3,200 seedlings will not be harvestable for a hundred and twenty years, provincial forests no longer cover what the workshops consume, and part of the raw material arrives from Khemisset and the Oujda region. To see the tree standing rather than sawn: the thuya forest and beach hike, the argan forest and the nature and traditions immersion.
The black is not ebony: how to read a marquetry piece
The prized part is not the trunk. It is the burl, that swelling taken from the stump, sliced into thin plates and polished until a dense, irregular figure appears. No two burls give the same pattern: that is the first thing to look at.
Everything around it is inlaid. A 2008 report filed from the Essaouira workshops by the American magazine Fine Woodworking lists ebony, walnut, citrus woods, mother-of-pearl, silver wire, copper, aluminium and chips of bone. A second, published in 2014, describes the two substitutions that make the trade's real economy: the black is often lemon wood steeped in oil, far cheaper than ebony, and the bright metal line is aluminium cut from a powdered milk tin. This is not deception but a price constraint, and knowing it changes how you look. The mother-of-pearl comes out of a shell, like what the traditional fishing trip brings in.
One last marker: Souiri marquetry almost never depicts people, trees and flowers aside.
Speckled ground, irregular figure
Likely material: Thuya burl from the stump
What you can check: No two pieces can carry the same pattern
Black outline
Likely material: Stained lemon wood, sometimes ebony
What you can check: Ask the question, a marquetry maker answers straight
Bright metal line
Likely material: Aluminium, sometimes copper or silver
What you can check: Silver tarnishes with time, aluminium does not
Iridescent flecks
Likely material: Shell mother-of-pearl
What you can check: The edge shows the real thickness of the veneer
Cream white chipsBone
What you can check: Colder and more regular than mother-of-pearl
Deep gloss
Likely material: Gum arabic, spirit, then linseed oil
What you can check: A thick plastic film is varnish, not a finish
Four trays a week: the real pace of a workshop
The wood workshops occupy cells hollowed out beneath the ramparts of the Skala, and pieces too large for the room are worked outside, on trestles. It is the stretch of the medina that the guided tour walks most slowly.
The inlay gesture has five steps: cut a channel, fit a small piece of contrasting wood, file the edges, add a drop of glue, tap with a mallet until it sits flush. One artisan turns out four to five trays a week that way. Hand tools are forged on site from scrap metal, and the cooperative's only machine is a bandsaw four metres tall. Supply is still measured in donkey loads: seven logs of about 1.20 m keep one artisan busy for three to four months. Apprentices start at about fifteen and train until roughly nineteen.
The finish explains the rest of the price: spirit and gum arabic for the shine, linseed oil against splitting. What all of this weighs in a trip, our line by line cost of a day works out.
The trades hanging on a single workshop, and the two that are missing
Six of the complex's ten trades have one workshop each: traditional weaving, argan products, candles, leatherwork, carpets and hanbel, and drazza. Argan products have a whole supply chain behind their workshop, which our argan oil article traces from tree to bottle.
Drazza is handloom cloth weaving, a trade distinct from carpet making and the most fragile on the list: in Assilah, Le360 filmed the last family still practising it in 2022. Embroidery, by contrast, survives through the cooperative model, which our article on solidarity embroidery tells from the inside.
Basketry is doing better. It works doum, the dwarf palm of dry country: fibres sun dried, soaked again for a few hours, then braided by hand, a tight braid and slight irregularities marking the hand work. You will find it at Souk Jdid and at the Sunday market of Had Draa, which the traditional markets outing reaches without a car.
Two absences are surprising: no coppersmith workshop, none of the hammered copper and brass that made the name of Fez, and no pottery workshop. Here pottery is taught, not exported, and the workshop opens Monday to Saturday, while the rest of culture and heritage is walkable.
Where to watch them work, without being pushed to buy
Three institutional addresses are enough, and none of them pushes a sale.
- The crafts complex, home to the nineteen cooperatives under the same roof as the provincial crafts directorate.
- Dar Al Arar gallery, opened in June 2026 at the entrance of the crafts complex, two floors of carving and marquetry, run by the Union of Thuya Wood Craft Cooperatives. Open daily from 10 am to 9 pm outside public holidays, free entry, prices displayed.
- The Marquetry Makers' Cooperative, founded in 1948, set in a riad inside the medina.
For the rampart cells, a guided walk is the easiest way in without getting underfoot, and the medina escape game the most playful way to read these streets. If you are coming from Marrakech for the day, allow two hours for the craft part, with a private transfer or a rental car rather than a parking space to hunt for. All our experiences are sorted by theme.
The four questions to ask before you pay
- Which part of the tree is this from? Stump burl or branch wood: the answer alone places the price bracket.
- Is the black ebony or lemon wood? Is the metal line silver, copper or aluminium? A marquetry maker answers straight. A reseller changes the subject.
- Where does the wood come from? Provincial forests no longer cover what the trade needs, and a cooperative can name the channel it buys through.
- Who made this piece, and in how long? Four to five trays a week is the honest pace of one pair of hands.
And one rule worth more than the four: turn the piece over. The back, the underside of a lid, the inside of a hinge tell the truth about the rest. Solid thuya dislikes dry air, and it is linseed oil that keeps it from splitting, not varnish. A rainy day is the best moment for all of this, as our plan B for grey days explains.
Doing rather than watching: the workshops you can book
The catalogue has no marquetry workshop: the trade takes years, not two hours. Four workshops do take bookings by the half day, each run by working artisans.
Days and times: Monday to Friday, 11 am or 2 pm
Age: From 6
Price: 350 Dhs adult, 280 Dhs child
Days and times: On request
Age: From 6
Price: 350 Dhs adult, child rate to confirm
Days and times: Mondays, 3.30 pm to 5.30 pm
Age: From 14
Price: 350 Dhs
Pottery, hand buildingHalf day
Days and times: Monday to Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm
Age: From 3
Price: 350 Dhs adult, 290 Dhs ages 3 to 18
The raku course books separately, at 750 Dhs. For cooking, the culinary workshops and the article that details them extend the day. With children, our family guide, the summer one and the one for toddlers list the minimum ages; and in three days, keep craft for the mornings.
Craft is what remains of Essaouira once the season leaves, so the low season is the right time to watch it work, the opposite of what the weather calendar recommends for board sports. On windy days, explained by our article on the trade wind, a workshop beats a beach. For the rest, Essaouira or Agadir, the festival calendar, the Gnaoua Festival and slow travel close the loop.
Tell us what you want to understand, and we will open the right door.
Book the guided medina tour or message us on WhatsApp, we reply the same day.
