I have been visiting and making friends on my visits to Morocco for over 30 years. Recently I have made friends with some of the woodworkers in the coastal town of Essaouira; a town famous for its marquetry in local thuya wood. I am now working on a new project in conjunction with one of the finest woodworkers there, Abderaheim, who produces wooden items of exceptional beauty and craftsmanship in a garage workshop with an absolute minimum of power tools. It is humbling to see what he, and his working partner Simohammed, can create without all the advantages of power tools that I take for granted and are available to me at the flick of a switch in my workshop.
Like all my friends there, Abderaheim has a deep love of early US Blues music, which appears to have some kind of connection with the black Moroccan Gnoua music that I became captivated by when I first visited in 1979.
I plan to make more of these bellows in conjunction with Abderaheim and to make each one a unique, bespoke creation. Please contact me directly if you are interested in commissioning one of of these exclusive bellows. The waiting time for one is likely to be a couple of years.
