Brass and copper lanterns

What it is

The Maison de l’Artisan counts light fittings, along with trays, teapots and kettles, among the everyday objects of dinanderie; chandeliers of bronze and copper adorn homes and other buildings.¹ In Moroccan Arabic a lamp or lantern is called fnar, an oil lamp qendil.²

By dinanderie the Maison de l’Artisan means work with sheet metal, above all copper and brass, but also tin, steel, lead, nickel silver and aluminium.³ In Fez and Marrakesh craftspeople work copper like goldsmiths, with fine openwork.⁴

History

According to the Maison de l’Artisan, dinanderie appears in Morocco in the 12th century and becomes a speciality in its own right from the 14th century; at that time door knockers of bronze, copper and brass appeared on the doors of wealthy families in Fez.⁵ In the Batha Palace in Fez, begun under Sultan Hassan I (r. 1873–1894) and completed under Sultan Abd al-Aziz (r. 1894–1908), copper lamps of various shapes adorn the galleries; the palace is now a museum.⁶

How it is made

The craftsman raises a sheet into shape from the outside with a mallet; the blows must be even, and the piece is heated from time to time to smooth out the deformations left by the mallet.⁷ The pattern is then drawn onto the metal from a template or freehand, engraved with a graver, chased, shaped and soldered with tin or silver; the patina comes last.⁸ On average six people work on a single piece, which can take several days or weeks.⁹

The coppersmith Anas Khardal from Fez, who has worked for almost 25 years and learned the craft in his father’s workshop, calls engraving one of the most delicate steps; at the end the piece is polished.¹⁰ The workshops are in the medina and in the Seffarine craft quarter in Aïn Nokbi; according to him, brass cost around 170 dirhams a kilo there in 2026, red copper over 200.¹¹

Engraving on gold, silver and copper has been on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage since 2023, as a joint inscription of Morocco with nine other states.¹² The skills are passed on within families, by watching and joining in, and in workshops run by training centres.¹³