Moncef’s passing has made us think again about what it means to preserve a craft, and the future of Mediterranean craftsmanship.
He was part of our atelier for years, a man of few words, the kind whose hands said everything his voice didn’t. Like so many of the artisans we work with, he learned this trade young, from someone close to him, as a way to make a living and stay off the streets. He gave the rest of his life to it. He is the second member of our small team we have lost in a year.
At OSAY, we often speak about heritage, about the beauty of Mediterranean craftsmanship, about techniques and knowledge passed from one generation to the next. But heritage is not an object. It is not something that can simply be placed in a museum and preserved.
Heritage lives in people.
It lives in the hands of the men and women who learned a skill when they were young, often from a parent, a relative, or someone in their community. It lives in years of repetition, instinct, patience, and knowledge that is difficult to write down or teach from a manual. And when those people disappear, something can disappear with them.
This is the part of preserving craft that we don’t talk about enough. We can celebrate the finished object. We can photograph it, sell it, put it in exhibitions, and call it heritage. But if there are fewer and fewer people able, or willing, to dedicate their lives to making it, what exactly are we preserving?
What we have tried to do, and where it falls short.
We have tried to face this honestly, in the ways a small, independent company can. We offer free training. We try to pay fairly, to dignify the work, to talk about it as what it is: skilled, creative labor, not a fallback occupation. It has not been enough. Training is slow and costly for a company our size to carry alone, long before it produces someone who can work at Moncef’s level. And even when we succeed, we lose the next generation to other work almost as fast as we bring them in.
What preserving craft actually requires.
The artisans who carry these traditions need more than admiration. They need a reason for the next generation to choose this work. They need dignified livelihoods, sustainable businesses, training, and institutions willing to invest in craftsmanship as something living and economically valuable, not simply something nostalgic.
At OSAY, we don’t have all the answers. We are a small company, and we are still learning what it means to take responsibility for a tradition that existed long before us. But we believe that if we want these crafts to have a future, we have to build that future around the people who carry them.
For Moncef, and for all those whose hands have carried this knowledge before him.
Kenza, Simone, and the entire OSAY team and atelier
