Stripe Field
A composition of horizontal bands — the plainest thing a flatweave can do, and one of the hardest to do well.
A stripe field is what a flatweave makes when the weaver simply changes colour at intervals. Each row of weft is a colour choice; change the choice at regular points and you get stripes. In that sense it is the most honest use of the technique — it works with the loom's grain instead of forcing a picture onto it.
The plainness is deceptive. The whole art is in the relationships: which colours, in what order, how wide each band, how a narrow stripe plays against a wide one, how much a single colour is allowed to vary within its band. A good stripe field works the way a piece of music does — the interest is in the intervals, not in any one note.
There is an old habit of filing stripe rugs as "just" everyday pieces — made fast, for the floor, for dividing a tent — as opposed to the dense ceremonial work. That is not wrong, but it is incomplete. Fast-and-functional does not mean lesser. Some stripe fields are composed with more care than some elaborate grids. The restraint is a decision, and when it is made well it becomes the whole point.
The Zanafi weavers of the Taznakht region make the best stripe fields in Morocco — bands of ochre, rust, ivory, and dark wool handled with a sense for colour that other Moroccan flatweave does not match.
