In the Mellah and around Place des Ferblantiers, the dinandiers of Marrakech still work brass the way the guild taught: a flat disc, a stake, and thousands of hammer blows that raise a vessel without a single seam.\n\nMuch of the metal is recovered — old trays, spent cartridges, plumbing salvaged from the medina. Melted, poured and rolled, it returns as sheet ready to be raised, annealed red-hot, and raised again. The chasing that follows, the nqach, is done with punches cut by the artisan himself; no two sets are alike, which is why a trained eye can name the workshop from the border alone.\n\nThe craft nearly disappeared to cast imports. It survives because a handful of maalems accepted contemporary forms — plain, unornamented, lit only by the hammer marks — and because buyers outside Morocco were willing to pay for the hours those marks represent.
