wanted: jayson home’s frank ottoman
{jayson home moroccan wedding blanket parson’s bench}
a story about me and morocco.
the year i was bat mitzvahed, my grandma took my entire extended family (my cousin and i are the same age) on a 2 week trip to morocco. though i had traveled a bunch as a kid (lucky me!), morocco was a whole other world. literally. for starters, it was in AFRICA. i mean, hi, exotic locale. it was also a place where girls with blonde hair and hazel eyes were things to be bartered for. my price was equivalent to a few nice rugs and some steaming mugs of mint tea. it was a place where the old world still had a firm hold on things, where lifestyle glossies like vogue had yet to traverse the terrain, where rivers of mud and discarded trash ran straight through the streets. marrakech, specifically, was a visceral feast. the sights, the sounds, the smells. and don’t even get me started on the leather tannery we visited one day. talk about smells, or should i say, stenches. holy moly, did i have to hold my nose at that one.
as blessed as i feel that i’ve visited such an incredible place, part of me wishes i’d made the trip when i was a bit older. i think i would appreciate the country a lot more now than i did then. i suppose that’s why it’s important to travel as an adult – because your brain has formed enough to truly wrap itself around the amazing experiences that sojourning around the world bring. one thing i’m sure i would appreciate now more than i did than is the amazing color and style of moroccan interiors – from the colorful tilework to the gorgeous moroccan wedding blankets that have become all the rage in interior design over the past few years.
also known as handira, moroccan wedding blankets are traditional cape-like nuptial garments of the Berber women. these gorgeous pieces, worn by brides at their wedding ceremonies, are handwoven by a bride’s relatives, and can take weeks to complete. these days, you’ll see them hanging on walls, atop crisp white sheets being used as bedspreads, beneath dining tables as rugs…the design possibilities are endless. a bit sparkly, a bit sequin-y, and a whole lot of pretty, moroccan wedding blankets are a beautiful, versatile piece that the interior world can’t get enough of.
you can get the real thing by doing a bit of savvy googling, or you can snag mass market versions, which have popped up everywhere from anthropologie to jayson home (where the piece above can be found).
sweet studio 