The Pineapple Basket — Hand-Embroidered Moroccan Straw Tote

The pineapple is crocheted, not printed. You can see it the moment you look properly — the body is worked in yellow wool with a brown lattice stitched over the top, each little segment its own raised square, and the crown is five separate green leaves fanning up over the rim of the basket. It sits proud of the weave by a few millimetres. A printed pineapple lies flat and dead; this one has a shadow.

Underneath is a traditional Moroccan market basket. Doum palm — the wild palm that grows across the country — cut, sun-dried until it pales to straw, split into ribbons, and woven by hand in the tight herringbone that every Moroccan household basket has used for generations.

What we like most is that the yellow carries all the way through. The handles are wrapped in yellow cotton thread, wound tight along their whole length, and the same yellow runs as a whipstitch around the rim. It ties the whole basket to the fruit rather than leaving the pineapple stranded on a plain background. That's a deliberate decision by someone who was thinking about the object as a whole, and it's the difference between a motif and a design.

The handles are short — this is a hand-carried or crook-of-the-elbow basket, the way market baskets have always been carried, not a shoulder bag.

Available in three sizes, so pick by what you'll actually put in it: a small for a phone-purse-sunglasses summer bag or a child's first proper basket; a medium for beach days and market mornings; a large when you want to carry towels for two and a bottle of something cold.

Open at the top and unlined, which is the traditional construction — it airs out after a damp swimsuit rather than staying wet, and you can see what's in it.

Woven and embroidered entirely by hand in Marrakech. The weave, the exact dimensions and the pineapple's precise shape will all be a little different on yours. Every one is slightly its own fruit.

Features & Specifications

• Material: Hand-woven doum palm straw (natural, undyed) with cotton embroidery and cotton-wrapped handles
• Detail: Hand-crocheted pineapple in yellow, green and brown cotton, applied by hand
• Handles: Straw core wrapped in yellow cotton thread; short hand-carry length. Matching yellow whipstitch at the rim
• Sizes: Small, Medium and Large (exact dimensions per size — see note below)
• Closure: Open top, unlined — traditional construction
• Handmade: 100% handcrafted in Marrakech, Morocco. Ships direct from our workshop.
• One of a kind: Weave density, exact dimensions and embroidery proportions vary between baskets. Small irregularities are the mark of hand-weaving, not defects.
• Care: Keep dry where you can; palm straw is naturally water-resistant but not waterproof. If it gets wet, air dry naturally away from direct heat. Dust with a dry brush. Store loosely stuffed to hold its shape rather than flattened. Spot clean the embroidery gently with a barely damp cloth — do not soak, as the cotton colours may run.
• A natural material note: Palm straw may shed a few fibres when new. This settles within the first weeks.

Ships from Marrakech. Three to five days with DHL or FedEx. Thirty days to change your mind.

Cut and stitched by hand in our Marrakech workshop. Because every hide is different, no two pieces are identical.