The Mrirt Line

The Beni Ourain are a confederation of Berber tribes in the Middle Atlas mountains of Morocco. Within the Beni Ourain family, Mrirt designates a finer quality — referring both to the village of Mrirt in the Khenifra province and to a tradition of finer knotting and soft highland wool. Mrirt pieces are distinguished from regular Beni Ourain work by a finer knot density, more disciplined drawing, and a surface that combines the characteristic Beni Ourain pile with a softer hand.

This piece belongs to the Djoharian Design Mrirt line — a contemporary Mrirt production developed for interiors that want the Mrirt hand and the Berber material tradition, but in a freely composed, artist's register rather than the classical cream-and-charcoal idiom. The composition abandons the strict lozenge grid in favour of an abstract field of irregular colour blocks and broken striations — closer to a modern painting than a repeating motif.

Colour and Composition

A soft cream ground carries irregular blocks and bands of brick red and terracotta, sky blue, warm brown and ochre, and mustard yellow, anchored at the lower left by a deep aubergine field. The colours sit in loose, asymmetric zones with drawn striations running through them — a free, patchwork-like composition in the contemporary Moroccan idiom (in the spirit of Azilal and Boujad colour work) rather than the strict geometric Berber grid. No two areas repeat, and the surface is carried by the depth and softness of the highland wool.

Presence in the Room

At 280 × 360 cm (10.1 m², approx. 9 × 12 ft) this is an extra-large room-size piece in the international 9 × 12 ft format. Three contexts in which it comes into its own:

• Modern living room: a scale for a full sofa group of four to five pieces — the soft pile is pleasant to walk on barefoot, and the multicolour palette becomes the room's chromatic centrepiece.
• Dining room: under a long table for eight to ten, the abstract colour fields read clearly from above as a layered, contemporary foundation.
• Open-plan loft: the vivid palette works as a counterweight to neutral architectural materials — raw concrete, blackened steel, pale oak.

Specifications

Responsible Origin · Label STEP

Djoharian is a Label STEP certified dealer for fair-trade knotted rugs — fair wages for the weavers and no child labour. Visit the Label STEP entry for Djoharian Teppiche →

Djoharian — Five Decades of Oriental Rug Expertise

With roots in the Grand Carpet Bazaar of Tehran and more than five decades of experience in the international rug trade, Djoharian has specialised in Persian, antique and designer rugs since 1967.

Service and Delivery

Every piece is expertly inspected in our atelier in Lohr am Main before dispatch. For expert washing and repair we offer our own professional rug cleaning service. We offer secure and fast worldwide shipping, fully insured, and personal consultation in our showroom or by video call.