Leather
السرّاج
The saddler’s half-moon knife
The signs
Above the door
Beside the crests, the two houses carry the signs of the workshops and six emblems on the thresholds. The sign of a workshop is the tool of the trade, the one the hand holds every day, rather than a mark chosen to stand for something. The form is that of the polylobed cartouche, the shamsa of manuscript frontispieces, and not that of the European shield; it is carved in cedar, with the tool in forged iron or brass at the centre, the ground in a single colour, and nothing else. No lettering: whoever has spent a week in the house has no need of it, and whoever arrives learns the sign by learning the trade.
01The signs of the workshops
No workshop makes its own sign: wood carves the panel, metal forges the tool, the book paints and burnishes the ground. Above the doors, every day, it shows that no guild is sufficient to itself.
The book
المجلّد
The reed pen crossed with the gilding wheel
Metal
الصفّار
The hammer on the copper basin, as at Seffarine
Wood
النجّار
The bow of the lathe
Cloth
النسّاج
The shuttle, makkuk
Ceramics
الفخّار
The minqash, the small hammer that cuts the zellige
Plaster
الجبّاص
The compass and the gouge, the geometry before the hand
The laboratories
العطّار
The still, al-inbīq
In Fez only
Glass
الزجّاج
The tongs and the blowpipe, on a ground of green glass grains
To take in master glassmakers from lands at war
The saddlery
The finished saddle, which holds leather, wood and metal together
The Riad’s opening workshop
02The emblems of the thresholds
The emblems are six and six only, carved in the same cedar, on the same night-blue ground, with the same gold figure in relief. They mark the passages rather than the rooms: the hammam, the refectory and the oratory carry none, because a mark that repeats stops being a mark.
The knot
On the entrance passage, the sqifa. A single band that passes over itself and does not end: the bond with the house is tied, it is not received.
The babouches
Where shoes come off. It is the one door of the house that no lock defends, and that is not crossed for all that.
The lamp
On the one door closed by a single key. What is locked is what one answers for before the others, rather than what belongs to oneself.
The three keys
On the armoured door of the chest, the only one that opens with three keys together: for what one answers for before everyone, no one answers alone.
The pomegranate
The fruit that shows nothing of what it holds. One does not go in at will: what is given all at once is not learned.
The star
Above the connecting door between Al-Munya and the house: in Fez between the Munya and the Riad, in Sicily between the Munya and the Funduq. It is the only door that joins the two bodies. The frame differs from that of the other five, because this threshold does not belong to the house alone.
The signs are the same in the two houses. The saddlery, which brings the leather workshop together with those of wood and metal, is the workshop with which the Riad will open; at the Funduq the workshops will open as the masters trained in Fez become available. The dress is the same for everyone and carries no colours; the sign says what is done in each workshop.