The TIMENDOTES Association is passionately committed to preserving and promoting the sfifa, a traditional Moroccan form of passementerie that decorates the caftan, takchita and keswa el kbira. Traditionally the sfifademarcated the unique diversity of regional Moroccan dress through various decorative plastrons and geometric forms. Today it continues to be used as a ubiquitous trimming that quietly signals the Moroccan caftan’s intrinsic character and identity. This ancestral weaving technique, using small cards threaded on a loom, is a testimony to the rich history of cultural exchange between North Africa and the Mediterranean. 

Unfortunately, the rise of industrial mass production and machine copying has adversely affected artisans who weave the sfifa by hand. Today, fewer than a hundred artisans know how to weave the more intricate sfifapatterns. Intermediaries exploit the weavers, which discourages them from passing on the knowledge of the craft.

Cognizant of the enormous challenges the artisans face, the TIMENDOTES Association plays a crucial role in supporting them to overcome the many structural and economic obstacles. TIMENDOTES encourages their professional development and facilitates access to high-value markets, guaranteeing master artisans a more equitable livelihood. It also provides training opportunities for women from rural communities affected by the pandemic, enabling them to learn the art of sfifa weaving.

TIMENDOTES recognizes the potential of the sfifa for luxury fashion, furnishings and decoration. Working with designers, it encourages innovation in design and weaving techniques and seeks to document the sfifa to preserve its essential role in Morocco’s intangible cultural heritage. 

By promoting excellence in craftsmanship and supporting craftspeople in their creativity and access to markets, TIMENDOTES ensures the continued existence of this important traditional art form. The sfifa is much more than decorative ornamentation alone, it is an intangible and material expression intrinsic to Moroccan cultural identity.

Origins of The TIMENDOTES Association

Since 2013, Mohammed Amine Dadda, who is an expert in organisational planning and management for social innovation, has provided support to artisans in Morocco who hand weave sfifa (a form of card weaving to create “passementerie” traditionally used to adorn caftans and djellabas, traditional saddles, ritual and decorative objects.) The sfifa forms an integral signature of the French-Moroccan couture brand Maison Mayad, which Amine Dadda co-founded with Maximiliano Modesti in 2018. Mayad’s cashmere cocoon coats and contemporary interpretations of the caftan are adorned with graphic sfifa accents and represent Amine and Max’s vision of nurturing Moroccan artisanal excellence for global luxury markets.

Between 2014 and 2020, Amine located artisans in rural villages as well as several who had migrated to Casablanca. He helped them set up their workshops and secure housing, and from his own funds gave them sufficient financial backing to refine their craft, free from crushing poverty and the grip of exploitative intermediaries. As Amine reflects, “The artisans need the freedom to create and reach their full potential.”

In 2021, to strengthen support for the artisans as well as respond to the devastating economic impacts of the global pandemic, Amine founded The TIMENDOTES Association, poetically named after the TIMENDOTES (the two vertical poles that support either end of the yarn to form a simple loom) as the sfifa is woven.  

The Association’s core goal is promoting craft excellence through training and support for Moroccan artisans who hand weave the sfifa. Maison Mayad’s sales will help to finance this project. One of the Association’s core goals is to help the artisans develop their skills and access new high-value-added markets for their craft. The TIMENDOTES Association recognizes that the sfifa‘s potential design applications in the areas of luxury fashion, home furnishings and interior design are limitless if the correct conditions for artisanal excellence are nurtured and sustained.  

The challenges for sfifa weavers

A proliferation of cheap machine-made copies since the 1990s has meant much-reduced markets for the more expensive handwoven sfifa. According to informal estimates, the number of artisans who still know how to weave the most complex traditional patterns is less than one hundred throughout Morocco. However, many artisans are now too elderly to weave, and only a few of the younger generation know the more complex patterns. Knowledge is passed on between generations and is acquired through practice-based learning with no formal training institutes and little written documentation about card weaving in Morocco.

Although the sfifa is demonstrably a vital part of the rich material culture of Moroccan dress and ornamental symbolism, weavers are often paid wages on which they can barely survive. The TIMENDOTES Association has conducted in-depth interviews with artisans across Morocco, including forty-year-old Mohamed, who now lives in Kenitra. He began making sfifa at the age of thirteen, learning the trade from his father. Mohamed recounts that as his village was far from any schools, he had zero opportunities for formal education and learning to weave sfifa was his way of earning a livelihood.

In 1999, at eighteen years old, he travelled to Casablanca to work for people from his region. He lived with ten to twelve other workers crammed into a small apartment. They worked six days a week from eight in the morning until midnight, and Sunday was their only time off. The basic wage was 2 Dirham (€0.19) per metre and up to 5 Dirham (€0.38) per meter for sfifa with complicated patterns where over thirty cards must be used on the warp in a complex and time-consuming process.  Given the time it takes to weave sfifa, Mohamed earned around 50 Dhiram (€4.76) a day, giving him a small income of about €120 monthly.


What is more shocking, than the low wages that Mohamed was paid, is how his employers withheld a portion of his, and his colleagues’ pay, to retain control over them.

Each week Mohamed and his colleagues received only a small part of their salary as “pocket money” on Sundays to go to the hammam, the hairdresser, the café, or to buy cigarettes. The artisans clung to these small comforts at the end of a grueling six-day work week crammed together whilst working sixteen-hour days in sweatshop conditions.


When the artisans returned to their families on the occasion of the two major Muslim holidays (Eid al-Adha and Eid-al-Fitr), they received only 60% of the wages owed to them, so they were forced to return to these terrible working conditions after their rare vacations. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) describes practices of employers withholding payment in this way as constituting “forced labour.”

Mohamed knows many of the patterns passed on for generations, never written down but learnt from observation. Tragically, however, he refuses to pass on this knowledge to his children. Due to his experiences of exploitation and low wages, he has concluded that one can “…eke out a meagre subsistence from this knowledge, but that a person cannot build anything with it.” He has suffered greatly, working all his life since a young age, yet he has earned very little, and his health and eyesight have been affected, “How can I pass this trade on to my children?” he asks.

Knowledge and pride in sfifa weaving heritage

The TIMENDOTES Association is deeply aware of the challenges that artisans like Mohamed face. The Association is working with highly skilled male and female artisans in Casablanca and in the Taounate province to put in place organizational structures, support and funding that mean artisans like Mohamed will be valued, supported and guaranteed fair remuneration for their skilled work, and able to build a sustainable future for themselves and their families. In addition, they will be supported to become teachers and trainers of the technique.

The TIMENDOTES Association will help make artisans aware of the value of their craft as part of Morocco’s cultural history and access new and high-value-added markets for their work. Fostering pride and self-awareness in their heritage goes hand in hand with giving artisans the tools to innovate and develop their design and making skills for the global market. Cultural history is therefore brought into dynamic conversation with today’s creative economy.