A Story from the 1980s

Two weeks ago, I wrote about a short but unexciting experience in Algeria. Come to think of it, North Africa was never one of my happier hunting grounds in my working days, whereas I had some most interesting and occasionally lucrative assignments in the eastern Mediterranean and the Arabian Gulf. One job in Morocco, though, deserves a book to itself… and it was a book, or rather TWO very large books that first introduced me to the country. Esoterically titled “Traditional Islamic Craft in Moroccan Architecture”, they sounded much more dry and specialist than they really were. They were the work of a French “Mr Fixit” who had fitted himself out as an architect/adviser-cum-supplier to King Hassan II of Morocco; an amazing man named André Paccard – look him up on Google, it’s worth it!

Whatever H.M. the King wanted, Paccard supplied it – whether it was fine French foods, machinery, household furniture and furnishings, jewellery or, in one case, 24 purpose-built villas for VIP foreign visitors invited for a royal celebration. But his jewel in the crown, so to speak, was to be two de luxe books about the mosques of the country. They would be a tribute and “thank you” to the King for his patronage. To do this, he was facilitated to travel all over Morocco, photographing mosques old and new, grand and tiny, city-based and rural. But they provided much more than architectural and background photography and information; they recorded and graphically demonstrated the traditional Moroccan crafts that seemed doomed to die out, forgotten and unrecorded - stone work, tiles decorative and constructional, wood crafts of many kinds, pottery, glass and glassware, calligraphy and illuminated scroll-work - indeed every aspect of traditional Moroccan arts and crafts.

The pictures were stunning and, having been royally sponsored, it was good business for Monsieur André Paccard, the author/publisher.