Painting on cedar

Tazouakt (also spelled tazouaqt, or simply zouaq) is the traditional Moroccan art of painting on wood: geometric or floral motifs applied by hand to wooden surfaces — most often cedar — to decorate doors, ceilings, cornices and furniture. The craftsmen who practise it are called zawwaqa; each develops a recognisable hand, to the point that the work of several different zawwaqa on the same ceiling can be told apart just by looking closely.

The wood: cedar

Tazouakt is painted almost exclusively on cedar wood, which is prepared and sometimes carved before it is painted. Atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica) has long been used to build buildings, palaces and mosques in Morocco, thanks in part to its natural resistance to insects, which makes it prized for both carpentry and fine woodworking. A biosphere reserve recognised by UNESCO in 2016 in Morocco's central Atlas Mountains protects on its own 75% of the world's population of the species — a cedar that also remains a significant part of the region's rural economy, supporting agriculture, beekeeping and tourism. That ecological fact is one thing; the wood's actual origin on a specific building project is another, separately documented: at the Bahia Palace in Marrakesh, the vizier Ba Ahmed had cedar brought from the Middle Atlas in the late 19th century for the decoration of the rooms he was having built, alongside marble from Meknes and tiles from Tetouan. The tazouakt that decorates doors and ceilings in the medinas of Fez, Marrakesh or Chefchaouen today is therefore not only an art of the brush: further upstream, it is also an art of choosing the wood.

The pigment and the binder

Before industrial paints, zawwaqa prepared their own colours from mineral pigments, ground with a mortar and pestle and mixed with skin glue heated over a brazier, the mejmar. Ochre backgrounds, for their part, were painted with an egg yolk-based paint. Every shade had its own recipe and workshop name: charred sheep's wool gave black, indigo (nila) gave blue, turmeric gave yellow, henna and paprika gave warm tones; poppy powder and pomegranate bark went into the red, and copper sulphate supplied certain shades of green. Craftsmen referred to their mixes with vivid expressions rather than technical pigment names — qalb lbanana for a light yellow, zraq ellil for a deep blue, moussekh for a deliberately muted or "dirtied" tone. Once the decoration was finished and dry, a linseed-oil varnish, applied with a cloth, protected the painted surface.

The gesture: tracing, brush and motifs

The tracing of tazouakt follows precise rules, passed down from one workshop to the next rather than written into a manual. Geometric compositions follow two fundamental principles, ḥasba and qasma, which govern the construction of stars from mathematical coefficients: a sixteen-point star surrounded by eight-point stars, for example, has its own name, stachri bel mtammen, and its centre has a name too, na'ora. From these same coefficients, a composition can move from a simple tracing to a far more complex one without ever losing its original symmetry. Floral motifs fall into two main families, always built as mirrored, symmetrical designs: tawriq (from waraqa, leaf) and tashjir (from shajara, tree), completed with more specific motifs such as 'arq (root), qronfel (carnation) or sūsān (lily).

The brush itself is handmade, from donkey mane hair. To transfer a complex motif without redrawing it every time, the craftsman first cuts a cardstock stencil, hollowing out the solid areas with a chisel for geometric tracings or a gouge for floral motifs, then stamps the design with a powder pad onto the already-prepared ochre background. Next comes the Triḥ: painting the printed motif, brush held in one hand, the other steadying it against the palm. Once the paint has dried, the stencil's powder residue is removed and the craftsman traces, with a fine brush, in white or black, the thin finishing lines that make each shape stand out — a step called Tazyīn.

Where it is applied: painted ceilings, doors and furniture

Tazouakt is applied to architecture — doors, windows, ceilings, awnings, friezes — as much as to furniture: tables, stools, mirror frames, chairs. The Bahia Palace in Marrakesh offers one of the best-documented and best-dated examples: the Grand Riad chambers carry an inscription dating their construction to 1866-67, under vizier Si Musa, while the Salle d'Honneur — considered one of the spaces with the finest painted decoration in the palace — carries an inscription from 1896-97, under vizier Ba Ahmed. The rest of the palace multiplies variations on the same gesture: a carved-and-painted ceiling in the Small Riad galleries, a decorated ceiling in a room around the Small Courtyard, a painted ceiling under the Grand Courtyard galleries, and, at the entrance to the Grand Riad, a ceiling combining carved muqarnas with painted decoration. Much of this abundance traces back to Ba Ahmed himself: grand vizier from 1894 to 1900, he brought in craftsmen from across Morocco to decorate the southern expansions of the palace he was building. Other landmark examples of zouaq are documented in Marrakesh, such as Dar Si Said and the Sidi Bel Abbas fountain, and in Fez, where the Mausoleum of Moulay Idriss II preserves one.

Who paints today

Zouaq remains a craft passed down directly, workshop to workshop, rather than through a school: zawwaqa — the most experienced are also called m'allems — still paint in the medinas where worked wood is traditionally not considered finished until it is painted, starting with Fez, Marrakesh and Chefchaouen. Each craftsman's hand remains recognisable, even when several m'allems work on a single ceiling — a quiet signature, at the scale of a single painted star or leaf. This continuity rests on the craft's own vocabulary: the technical terms for tracing (ḥasba, qasma), for motifs (tawriq, tashjir) and for colours (qalb lbanana, zraq ellil) are passed down together with the gesture itself, from m'allem to apprentice, rather than through any written teaching.

Where to see it, where to try it

To see tazouakt on a grand scale and precisely dated, the Bahia Palace in Marrakesh remains the reference: the Grand Riad (1866-67), the Salle d'Honneur (1896-97) and the galleries of the Small Riad and Grand Courtyard can all be visited. Dar Si Said, the Sidi Bel Abbas fountain and the Mausoleum of Moulay Idriss II in Fez show other variants, on doors and friezes rather than on whole ceilings. To meet the workshops still practising this craft today — stencil, mane-hair brush and pigments included — head to the Tazuri directory: discover the tazouakt craft.