Moroccan Handicraft Week at Katara

One of the things we like most about living in Qatar is that we are exposed to so much more of the world than we ever were back home.  We get to meet people from every country imaginable.  Its a very eye opening experience being here and we love it.
A couple of weeks ago we went to the Moroccan handicraft festival at Katara.  Katara is a large organization that maintains/celebrates/and teaches about the culture here in Qatar.  From their website, "Katara was born out of a long held vision to position Qatar as an international cultural lighthouse, radiating in the Middle East through Theater, Literature, Art, Music, Conventions and Exhibitions." 

The festival had over 55 artisans in ceramics, handmade traditional clothing, handwoven rugs, metalwork, jewelry, carpentry, etc.  I wanted to take every single thing I saw there home with me!  It was all so beautiful.  I would love to travel to Morocco some day.  

I was especially interested in the booths that featured metalwork.  There was a jewelry booth with Tuareg jewelry, and I also found a man who did Damascene, although he told me that in Morocco they call it Damasquini.  His shop was amazing. 

Damascene is the process of inlaying fine silver (or other soft metals) into steel.  His process was very similar to the way I learned to do it, but the tools he used were slightly different.  I posted about my experience learning the technique of Damascene here.  If you are interested in looking at more of his work, his website is www.palaisdamasquini.com .  Theres a really good video on the website here.

 In this photo (above) you can see the texture that is cut into the surface of the steel (looks like cross-hatching) in order for the silver to be inlaid.

 And, Ellie got her first henna tattoo! 

 They put glitter on it...which only ended up making a huge mess.  But Ellie thought she was a princess!

We ended the night with a nice little stroll along the shoreline.