How is silver Berber jewellery made?

Berber silver has a weight and presence quite unlike fine city jewellery, and you feel it the moment you pick up a piece in a Tiznit workshop — the great fibulae (the triangular pins women used to fasten their cloaks), the chunky engraved bangles, the amulet boxes meant to hold a written prayer. Tiznit, in the south near the Anti-Atlas, is the silversmithing capital, and its jewellery souk is where I send anyone serious about understanding this craft.

The smith starts with the silver itself — historically melted-down coins, today bar silver — heated in a small furnace until it flows, then either cast in a carved mould or poured into an ingot and hammered out into sheet and wire. From there it is all hand-shaping: cutting, bending, soldering the components of a brooch or a pendant together over a flame, the bench scattered with tiny tools that look unchanged in a century.

The decoration is where Berber silver becomes art. The smith engraves the surface with a chisel into geometric and protective motifs; he may apply granulation, fusing tiny beads of silver into patterns, or niello, where a black metallic compound is melted into engraved lines to make them stand out dramatically. Bright cloisonné enamel — green, yellow, blue — is fired into cells on the finer southern pieces, and cabochons of amber, red coral and coloured glass are set in. Every motif means something: protection from the evil eye, fertility, tribal identity. These are talismans as much as ornaments.

Tiznit is the place to watch it, and the Anti-Atlas towns and the Marrakech jewellery souk show it too. Our guides can route a southern trip through Tiznit and into a working silversmith's atelier, not just a sales counter, so you see the casting, soldering and engraving for yourself. Look for the genuine heft and the hand-cut irregularities of real Berber work — and ask about the meaning of the symbols, because every old piece has a story stamped into it.