Broken Comb
A comb or rake form, deliberately interrupted. The clearest example of a real habit in Amazigh weaving — and a much-repeated theory about why.
The comb was a real tool, used to beat the weft down tight on the loom, and its shape turns up woven into borders as well as in tattoos and jewellery across the Maghreb. As a motif it is common and easy to recognise: a row of teeth, usually along a border rather than filling the field.
The interesting thing is that the comb is often woven broken — the teeth interrupted at one or more points. This is not sloppiness. The break is deliberate and repeated, and any weaver doing it is making a choice. The standard explanation is protective incompleteness: the idea that a perfect object attracts the evil eye, so the weaver leaves a flaw on purpose. You will read this everywhere as settled fact.
It is worth being honest about it. The habit of deliberate imperfection is real and well documented — weavers do leave breaks, open forms, skipped repeats. The tidy single reason — the evil eye, specifically — is an interpretation, and a popular one, but not something most weavers will state in those words if you ask. Some do hold it. Others simply learned to weave the comb that way. The safe thing to say is that the break is intentional; the meaning behind it is less fixed than the confident version suggests.
Where it helps to know this: the broken comb shows up most in High Atlas and Anti-Atlas flatweave, usually as a border. When you see the interruption, read it as a decision, not a mistake — and do not let anyone "restore" it out.
