When Caitlin Dowe-Sandes and her husband, Samuel, first moved to Marrakech 12 years ago, they lived in an 18th-century house that could only be accessed via a mosque. “We wanted to be in the medina,” says Dowe-Sandes. “It felt like the right place to experience authentic Marrakech.” Their nail-studded front door was adjacent to the prayer hall. Each morning before dawn, they were woken by the muezzin’s call to prayer. “It was a special house with a real soul, but if you’re living in the medina, you need a reprieve from the madness of the souk,” she says. As the pair worked on their first home – “diminishing the patterns and the colour palette” – the idea for a new business, and with it an entirely new life, began to emerge.
The couple arrived in Marrakech from Los Angeles in 2006 for a year-long sabbatical. “We were mid-life, mid-career, and we thought we should have a new experience.” Caitlin worked in PR, Samuel in film. “We decided on Marrakech a bit haphazardly,” she admits. Neither had been to the city before, but they both spoke French and had an appreciation of Moroccan food and design.
It was during the renovation of their monochrome home in the medina that the idea for a new business “came in a flash”. The house was a five-minute walk from four tile studios where the couple saw first-hand how traditional cement tiles were made. “We love rich, classical patterning – that’s what drew us to Morocco in the first place – but we started to think that there might be a place for something more simple, more contemporary.” Popham Design was launched during their first year abroad.
The company sells handmade cement tiles internationally and employs 80 people. The factory is just outside the city, on the road that leads to the Atlas mountains. There is no production line: each cement tile is individually made by skilled craftsmen. The couple sketch the designs themselves with a notion of how it will “lay out” (how the pattern will repeat in situ). “Neither of us were in design, but this place brings a lot of inspiration,” says Dowe-Sandes. “I think we always say we’re inspired by travel, but it’s more that your mind goes to a different place when you travel. You have the freedom and the pleasure of thinking about design.”
The Hex Bubble typifies their approach. The hexagonal design, smattered with irregular spheres, was inspired by a day on the beach in Oualidia when Dowe-Sandes saw her friend’s daughter blowing bubbles. “It was such an enchanting moment,” she recalls. “There’s something magical about the North African light catching a bubble in the sky.” Throughout the collection, nature, light, patterns and shadows are all reduced to essential geometries, but there’s a pervasive sense of fun to the designs – a mood that is also apparent in the couple’s latest home in Gueliz, a neighbourhood that was designed and built by the French in the early 1900s.
In 2013, with a factory to run, a young daughter, Georgina (now eight), and a black labrador to look after, the couple decided to move out of the medina. “When we came to live here, it was an adventure and a lark, but when it turned into our life, we had more obligations,” she says. They settled into a 1950s three-bedroom, detached family home – an increasingly rare find in an area that is being rapidly redeveloped. In contrast to their medina home, this bright house is wrapped in cooling blues and greys. Statement lighting, vintage European furniture, taxidermy and brass accents create a playful eclecticism.
“We are pattern-fearless,” admits Dowe-Sandes, “and we’ve tried to use tiles in unconventional ways here.” On the ground floor, their Demi Hex Long design unifies the space, spreading from the entrance through to the living and dining room and into the bathroom. “The pattern isn’t too rigorous,” she explains. “We kept the same blue on one side of the tile throughout, and then alternated other colours at random. It gives the floor a nice movement: your eye doesn’t fixate on any pattern.”
In the dining room, Scarab tiles creep up the wall in place of wallpaper. In the master bedroom, the concrete floors are softened with Beni Ourain rugs and tiles are used to clad the chimney breast and act in place of a headboard. In the kitchen, Hex Target tiles cover the floor and walls, finishing above the window line in an irregular pattern: “I love a hexagon,” says Dowe-Sandes, “and this finish really shows off their shape: they don’t have to be cut to square edges.
“The whole premise of our collection is that people can play with them,” she continues. “There’s no right way to lay them. There’s no right way to lay any of them. There are infinite possibilities.”
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