SPOTLIGHT | Boucherouite rugs (or the very best and coolest rag rugs out there).

Boucherouite rug listed for sale by Rag Rug Style on Etsy.

So rugs have kinda been a thing for me over the past year. I’m not sure what happened exactly, but all of a sudden I was finding SO MANY great vintage rugs. (And I already had a bit of a hoard.) So I made a conscious effort to go hard on selling them, because my house was looking like a souk, and it went well. I still have a few left, but I sold nearly 15 rugs in the past twelve months, many for $100 or less. (Sorry pals, but you missed out. I was MOTIVATED.) Anyway, all this rug finding and selling got me re-aquatinted with my vintage rug knowledge and I wanted to share some of that with you.

How do I know so much about rugs? Honestly, I don’t. I am entirely self-taught. My Dad had a job importing rugs from India in the 1970s, but I can’t say he taught me all that much. Most of what I’ve gleaned has been from my own real-life finds and experiences, with a healthy dose of book-reading to fill in the gaps. (I’ll share some decent texts at the end of this post.) Still, I seem to know more than the average person and I’m happy to pay that knowledge forward.

SO. Boucherouite rugs.  Sometimes spelled Boucharweit or Boucherite (and always pronounced boo-sher-WET).

These are hand-loomed colourful rag rugs. Usually made from clothing scraps, they can also be made of any strips of discarded fabric, usually by women of remote Moroccan Berber tribes (nearish to cities including Marrakesh, Beni Mellal and Azilal, not that the city dwellers appreciated them, but more on that later). Genuine Boucherouite rugs exclusively originate from Morocco’s Atlas mountain area villages.

Most cultures have rag rugs of some kind or another. Think of Indian rag rugs (Chindi rugs), or even the sort of braided rugs made by American homestead women. Rag rugs were and are a thrifty way to get yourself a useful and cheerful floor covering while also combating waste and giving yourself something to do with your hands during your so-called leisure time. Though not always the case these days, in general, rag rugs are still made from the fabric remnants of daily lives, which leads us to another interesting thing about Boucherouite rugs – they’re still relatively cheap.

Boucherouite rug listed for sale by Rag Rug Style on Etsy.

As with the making of nearly all rag rugs, Boucherouite rugs are generally woven by one woman, or one family.

The artist/maker slowly weaves the rug over time, in between various other work and duties. She may use a bit of old clothing. Of curtains. Of a tablecloth. Anything fabric and to hand. And only a little bit at a time. This home-based labour is the nature of most real rug making the world over. Thus, those “no sweat shop labour” certifications that were so popular in the 90s and aughts often make little sense, and are really meant to trick uninformed bleeding heart western buyers, but that’s another post.

I won’t get into the long and obnoxious history of women’s work being systematically ignored and devalued. And I won’t go on about the way so-called “crafts” are considered less than so-called art. You get it. And for the purposes of this blog, we all benefit from the lower prices in Boucherouites.

Until recently, these pieces were not considered to have any significant consumer value.

Beni Ourains from the same areas went for thousands, but Boucherourites were the cheap-and-cheerful my-wife-made-it-to-brighten-the-kitchen sort of option, not even stocked for tourists in the souks. That seems to be changing. (I need to thank and shoutout Kate Pearce Vintage here, whose amazing Boucherouite has caught my eye on Instagram dozens of times, and who recently taught me that these rad rugs can even be washed in the washing machine! This is not commonly an option. One day I’ll tell you the story of when I tried to wash a rug in my machine and ruined the rug, AND broke the washer.) My point is that the while the prices may not stay low for long, at least for the moment, a Boucherouite is still a chick-made craft in a boys-club art world. Why not take advantage of this otherwise less-than-charming moment of misogyny trumping capitalism?

Beni Ourain by Best Wool Rug on Etsy.

I have never actually found a Moroccan Boucherouite rug in the wild.

I, of course, knew plenty about Beni Ourains. My grandparents had a midcentury one with that distinctive diamond pattern in their den for my entire life. (My idiot relatives threw it in the trash in 2008 when the old folks were relocating to assisted living. Nobody even asked me and I am bitter.)

I would have LOVED that rug. In their limited defence, the rug was supposedly soiled, but I would have cleaned the shit out of it (figuratively, but also literally) if I’d had to. I was that committed. Sigh. I digress!

I have since found and sold a less desirable Beni Ourain, and in my living room right now I have a Beni-inspired machine made rug by Nate Berkus for Target. (It’s not the same, but it’s fine.) Boucherouites were just not something I’d considered. They are (or were) too colourful for the old me.

That’s really their defining feature — wild, unpredictable colour.

Linear shag rug by Nate Berkus for Target

Thousands of diverse bits of fabric are woven into each piece. And while there is a method to the patterning, the colours do tend to be intense. The patterns and shapes also have meaning and are symbolic in various ways, but that’s definitely beyond the scope of my knowledge. And I think for the average buyer, the thing to look for is just personal visual appeal.

Boucherouite rugs usually have a shaggy appearance with tufts and textures and “pile” of difference lengths. Not shag, exactly, but not flat-woven either. (Although if you flip one, the back side should remind you of a flat-woven Chindi). A good-size Boucherouite can be had from a variety of Etsy sellers for $300 or so, INCLUDING shipping. Obviously if you could find one in the thrifting wild, you’d do better, but keeping in mind that I paid $250 for my crappy, machine-made no-natural-fibres Target rug, it’s really not bad.

I recommend you troll Etsy looking for a Boucherourite rug of your own.

One of my current favourite sellers of Boucherourites is Rag Rug Style. Take a peek! It’s something to do during the shut down. And while you’re at it, file it away in the back of your mind as something to look out once the thrifts and estate sales open up again: The Boucherouite. It’s where it’s at.

Oriental Rugs Antique and Modern by Walter A. Hawley

Tribal Rugs by James Opie

If you’re ready to learn more about rugs, there are tonnes of wonderful reference books out there. I recommend shopping from Thrift Books online or via Ebay during the coronavirus pandemic. Here are just a couple of texts I like and have used:

The next time I do a spotlight post on rugs, I’ll also give you some rug basics regarding what to look for and what to avoid when thrifting. Until then!

Want to shop some of my current vintage rug collection on Etsy? Head here. Or feel free to message me. I always like to do good deals for locals in particular.

Find more in the Will and Bequeath Spotlight series here.

As I work to get products up for sale on my own site, interested buyers should feel free to shop Will and Bequeath on Etsy and Will and Bequeath on Poshmark. These platforms take a large percentage of the sale price, and charge various other feels to sellers as well. In the future, I hope to have all my stock available on my own site, but until then…

Read all the posts in the Will & Bequeath blog tag here.