Moroccan Colours in Silver and enamel earrings. The above enamel and Silver work is a traditional artesan craft of Berber people in the region of the Anti Atlas mountain range. Historically the Berber peoples came out of the Nile Valley some four thousand years ago and spread all across the north of Africa, in the Maghreb area above the Sahara. They were the original inhabitants of the Atlas Mountain Ranges and the fertile land between the ranges and the Seas of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, before the Arabs came in the 700s. Over the centuries, no doubt in large part for security, the mountain ranges of northern Algeria and Morocco became Berber redoubts, and even now it is mostly Berber who live in these mountainous areas.
In Morocco it is the Berbers of the Anti Atlas, the southern-most section of the Atlas running south-west towards the Atlantic above Agadir, who produce enamelled Silver work such as the above. The “Moroccan Colours” in the old Tribal pieces, a few of which can be seen on this Christopher William website, tend to be in a subdued palette of pale browns and greens, with dark blue highlights, where the more modern work, though still crafted in the old traditional ways, tends to be brighter, the colours more strong and with greater contrasting effect.