Atelier Poterie Serghini Safi Maroc...

The production of pottery involves five stages :

1 - First, soaked raw clay should be processed by turners.

2 - Then it should be left to dry before applying varnish made of french kaolin which colours the pottery white. Afterwards, it should be left to dry again before proceeding to the first backing. The cooling takes two days.

3 - After that comes the decoration by paintbruch : every artisan has his own designs and curved drawings which are neither linear nor floral. Decoration can be done also through chain-work : a designer designs a form, and the next fills it in either with colours or homogeneous forms.

4 - Enamelling, which gives the pottery its colour and sparkle, is spectacular : big basins aligned in a courtyard and filled with a liquid more or less deep brown called 'the juice of fig' that determines the combination of the brilliant colours.

5 - The last stage consists of a second baking which fixes the enamel to the colour. Safi's pottery is polychrome. For its glazed earthenware, Safi Pottery uses brightly coloured enamels made of golden-brown antimony oxide which makes objects glitter with metallic lights.