Morocco Rococo

With the debut of a furniture and rug collection, Caitlin and Samuel Dowe-Sandes build on the success of their Marrakech tile company, Popham Design.

- Gisela Williams

TWELVE YEARS AGO, Caitlin and Samuel Dowe-Sandes headed to Marrakech from Los Angeles with the plan to take a year off from their careers in public relations and filmmaking, respectively, and indulge in an adventurous sabbatical. From the start, they fell in love with Morocco’s artisan culture: the pierced-sheet-metal lanterns; the Beni Ourain hand-knotted abstract rugs; the embroidered leather poufs. Within weeks, they bought a small three bedroom riad, in a mosque complex within the dusty pink walls of Marrakech’s old town, and started to renovate the interiors, working with local craftspeople to design and make bespoke furniture and lighting.

Instead of just buying traditional cement tiles for the floors, they decided to design their own, creating a black-and-white squiggle pattern for the living-room floor and a coral-branch one for the guest-room wall. This was the birth of their company, Popham Design, which produces brightly colored, boldly patterned encaustic cement tiles that add a dose of optimism to any interior, including the stylishly retro Haymarket hotel in Stockholm, Jade Jagger’s beach house on the tiny Spanish island of Formentera, and Pierre Frey’s home in Normandy.

Even back then, the couple had ideas for other products inspired by Moroccan artisans. They were continuously collaborating with local craftspeople on one-off pieces for their home, like painted-wood tables and mirrors fringed with porcupine quills. At one point, they had the seats of their Renault 4 car upholstered in vintage kilims.