In 1991, on her first trip to Morocco, Valérie Barkowski saw women working with a large raw earthenware dish, used to roll couscous or knead bread. She bought one, with no other idea than to use it at home. A saucy dish, served the very evening she returned, was enough to mark the clay.
In 1996, she returned to Morocco in search of a holiday home, already with the tableware for this future household to find. During this trip to the Rif, she discovered the region’s textile traditions—the very ones that would later give rise to her eponymous home linens trimmed with tassels. Along the roads, merchants offered pottery unlike what she had seen in 1991: raw earthenware tableware, but with a patina, never quite matte. Only utensils existed in this form. That is where the idea was born: an even rawer clay, shaped into plates. The trail of this pottery led to Oued Laou.
She expected to find a cooperative, a workshop. There was none. Only middlemen who gathered the pieces before reselling them. The work itself was done elsewhere: at the women’s homes.
A kiln in the courtyard serves three purposes: baking bread, firing clay, sheltering the dog in winter. The women are farmers, and they shape the clay between two farming seasons, when time allows. No electric wheel, no kick wheel: a slate set on the ground, turned by hand to reach each side of a piece built entirely freehand. Once the shape is achieved, a pebble rubbed over the still-fresh clay is enough to make it watertight.
That day, Valérie learned that tajines from the north and the south of Morocco do not look alike. That Oued Laou pottery, with its slightly pink clay, is made only in that part of the country, and nowhere else.
An idea that took twenty-five years to find its form
In 2021, Valérie met Guy Orban, a product development expert, close to materials and to handcraft. The issue identified in Oued Laou remained unresolved: Moroccan clays too impure for this kind of piece. Guy, for his part, worked with artisans who had access to purer clays.
An order was placed: a flat, minimal plate, in three sizes; a simple, straight-sided bowl, in four sizes. A pared-back design. The logo already existed; it was engraved under each piece.
What remained was to solve what the Oued Laou technique addressed differently: clay is porous, and a food-safe piece must meet precise standards. Once the pieces were delivered, a treatment developed after several trials, on two clays and two colours, made it possible to seal the pores while respecting those standards. The method remains hers. The result, in turn, took shape as two tableware sets, purchased for Dar Kawa, then offered for sale at the Marrakech boutique.
With use, the pieces improve. They change, month after month: the patina is alive, and continues to evolve.
A choice: to stay in Marrakech
She gave it a name: TAN. Tableware sold exclusively at the V.Barkowski Store, in Marrakech.The choice is deliberate. Not everything should travel: it is a privilege reserved for those who live in Marrakech, and for those who agree to take their pieces home themselves, in their suitcase, after a trip. Shipping this kind of object in small quantities makes no sense – neither for the environment, nor given the risk of breakage, nor for the disappointment of a customer who would receive a broken piece. Finally bringing a twenty-five-year-old idea to fruition, using it at Dar Kawa, and selling it in the boutique are also three reasons that fully satisfy her.
On this table, a candlestick follows the same logic: the Bobines candlesticks, a little more sophisticated, with a hand-twisted thread wrapped around their stem, also sold exclusively at the Marrakech boutique. We tell you their story here, if you would like to know everything about them.
Those who play along—and the others
In the boutique, reactions are divided. Some stop and listen to the explanation: raw, participatorytableware, more respectful of the environment, that you must learn to protect against stains and oil. Some ask for the instructions and leave with them. Others move on.There is another reason to grow attached to it: this tableware is made from a single material, shaped and then fired. A broken plate returns to the earth.
Manon De Clercq
A table that follows the same logic
Table linen follows a similar path. Valérie used to work with coloured poplin, and sometimes coloured linen—materials she has since abandoned in favour of raw cotton, in its natural colour. By removing the glaze from the clay, she realised she could apply the same logic to fabrics: less water consumed, fewer chemicals used—those in glazes as well as those in dyes.
The collection was built up in touches, each finish has its own name. Nil, with its hand-spun thread, drawn from the repertoire of traditional Moroccan passementerie. Noon, with its scattered stars, a deconstructed interpretation of an embroidery stitch from Fès. Each comes in tablecloths, placemats and napkins, available on the e-shop.
On the same table, materials faithful to what they are, and a cuisine that has become vegetarian over time. A coherence not conceived all at once, but one that, over the years, has come together—and continues to move forward. For Valérie Barkowski, changing these ways of doing things is no longer an option.
The story of Dar Kawa: textile creation, collections, and life in Marrakech At the end of the work, in autumn 1999, Dar Kawa opened its doors. I didn’t really have time to realize what was happening. The night before the first Belgian journalists arrived, we were still working late into the night. The next morning, …
(ART)wareness, an Exhibition That Shapes Awareness, Literally As part of ‘’What’s on’’, the Off program of the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in Marrakesh, Céline and I are hosting the A(RT)wareness exhibition in my studio, above the V.Barkowski store in Dar El Bacha. From 4 to 10 February 2026, the space will present a series …
The term ‘slow travel’ makes me smile. To me, it means something very simple: taking the time to inhabit a place until it is no longer foreign. This is what happened with the Marrakech medina, which I walked through and across, year after year, until it became my own. 1996. I didn’t know yet that …
Dar Kawa’s raw tableware and raw cotton
A dish discovered in 1991, a lead pursued in 1996
In 1991, on her first trip to Morocco, Valérie Barkowski saw women working with a large raw earthenware dish, used to roll couscous or knead bread. She bought one, with no other idea than to use it at home. A saucy dish, served the very evening she returned, was enough to mark the clay.
In 1996, she returned to Morocco in search of a holiday home, already with the tableware for this future household to find. During this trip to the Rif, she discovered the region’s textile traditions—the very ones that would later give rise to her eponymous home linens trimmed with tassels. Along the roads, merchants offered pottery unlike what she had seen in 1991: raw earthenware tableware, but with a patina, never quite matte. Only utensils existed in this form. That is where the idea was born: an even rawer clay, shaped into plates. The trail of this pottery led to Oued Laou.
She expected to find a cooperative, a workshop. There was none. Only middlemen who gathered the pieces before reselling them. The work itself was done elsewhere: at the women’s homes.
A kiln in the courtyard serves three purposes: baking bread, firing clay, sheltering the dog in winter. The women are farmers, and they shape the clay between two farming seasons, when time allows. No electric wheel, no kick wheel: a slate set on the ground, turned by hand to reach each side of a piece built entirely freehand. Once the shape is achieved, a pebble rubbed over the still-fresh clay is enough to make it watertight.
That day, Valérie learned that tajines from the north and the south of Morocco do not look alike. That Oued Laou pottery, with its slightly pink clay, is made only in that part of the country, and nowhere else.
An idea that took twenty-five years to find its form
In 2021, Valérie met Guy Orban, a product development expert, close to materials and to handcraft. The issue identified in Oued Laou remained unresolved: Moroccan clays too impure for this kind of piece. Guy, for his part, worked with artisans who had access to purer clays.
An order was placed: a flat, minimal plate, in three sizes; a simple, straight-sided bowl, in four sizes. A pared-back design. The logo already existed; it was engraved under each piece.
What remained was to solve what the Oued Laou technique addressed differently: clay is porous, and a food-safe piece must meet precise standards. Once the pieces were delivered, a treatment developed after several trials, on two clays and two colours, made it possible to seal the pores while respecting those standards. The method remains hers. The result, in turn, took shape as two tableware sets, purchased for Dar Kawa, then offered for sale at the Marrakech boutique.
With use, the pieces improve. They change, month after month: the patina is alive, and continues to evolve.
A choice: to stay in Marrakech
On this table, a candlestick follows the same logic: the Bobines candlesticks, a little more sophisticated, with a hand-twisted thread wrapped around their stem, also sold exclusively at the Marrakech boutique. We tell you their story here, if you would like to know everything about them.
Those who play along—and the others
A table that follows the same logic
Table linen follows a similar path. Valérie used to work with coloured poplin, and sometimes coloured linen—materials she has since abandoned in favour of raw cotton, in its natural colour. By removing the glaze from the clay, she realised she could apply the same logic to fabrics: less water consumed, fewer chemicals used—those in glazes as well as those in dyes.
The collection was built up in touches, each finish has its own name. Nil, with its hand-spun thread, drawn from the repertoire of traditional Moroccan passementerie. Noon, with its scattered stars, a deconstructed interpretation of an embroidery stitch from Fès. Each comes in tablecloths, placemats and napkins, available on the e-shop.
On the same table, materials faithful to what they are, and a cuisine that has become vegetarian over time. A coherence not conceived all at once, but one that, over the years, has come together—and continues to move forward. For Valérie Barkowski, changing these ways of doing things is no longer an option.
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