Behind the Ademkal Curtain: Collaboration at the Heart of Memòri
Memòri began as an act of remembering. Founded in Marseille in 2020, the small studio sets out to revive fragile practices across the Mediterranean by intertwining ethnography, material research and patient collaboration in a living practice that asks how craft can be sustained, remunerated and reimagined in ways that respect both people and landscape.
Siroua sheep in the mountains of Morocco. Photo: Pierre Girardin
At the centre of this endeavour is the Siroua sheep — a mountain breed whose long, silky fleece has underpinned Moroccan weaving traditions. Found on high plateaus between the Toubkal massif and the desert, the Siroua’s fleece produces unusually long fibres (reaching up to 30 cm) and a tactile silkiness prized by tribal weavers. Yet this breed, which is integral to a regional ecological and cultural system, is vulnerable. Since 2017 Memòri, alongside Maroc Inédit and local partners, has helped launch the Siroua Wool Project: an initiative to protect the breed, improve shearing and sorting practices, and ensure that shepherds and weavers share in the wool’s value.
Women spinners and weavers of the Feija tribe. Photo: Pierre Girardin
These efforts ripple down to a remote Anti-Atlas village where women of the Feija tribe continue to handspin with rare finesse. Here, loom work and spinning are social rites as much as craft: bridal veils and ceremonial textiles are stitched into family memory, decorated with henna motifs and passed from mother to daughter. Memòri’s practice is built on long residencies, collective experimentation and mutual trust — weeks and months spent sitting with weavers, testing natural dyes, refining spun yarns and listening to the workflows that sustain these fragile economies.
Ademkal curtain by Memòri. Handspun and handwoven local wool, hand dyed with different plants from the region.
The Ademkal curtain is the tangible result of that slow work. Handspun, handwoven and dyed with plant materials gathered from the region, each curtain is a collaborative object: co-designed with the women weavers, measured to fit, and produced mindful of wool traceability. The cloth carries the grain of place, the patience of handspun slubs, and the muted cadence of natural tones. And it arrives as much as a material proposition as an ethical one. Production respects time: lead times of 14–16 weeks prioritise process over quantity, and pricing by the square metre acknowledges the labour embedded within.
Shepherd/shearer working with traditional blacksmith-made scissors. Photo: Pierre Girardin
Memòri’s commitments extend beyond product. Training visits with shearers and wool-sorters, co-financed by Memòri Lab and partner organisations, aim to improve yields and animal welfare while preserving traditional techniques such as force-shearing done by local blacksmith-made scissors. Photographer Pierre Girardin’s documentary work — recently recognised by the Textile Exchange Programme — has amplified these woven lives, bringing the faces of shepherds and weavers into contemporary conversations about sustainability.
The Ademkal curtain is therefore more than a window dressing: it is an artefact of reciprocity that holds landscape, lineage and labour in its warp and weft. In supporting this kind of making we do not merely collect objects; we sustain practices that allow memory to live forward.
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Further Information:
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Image Credits:
Lead: Ademkal curtain by Memòri. Handspun and handwoven local wool, dyed with different plants from the region.
All further images as credited in photo captions.