Left to right: The Moroccan trellis shows up in porcelain tile from Home Depot, a bunching table from Walmart, a dress from Lands’ End and curtains from JCPenney.
You may know it as the lantern design, or “lucky clover” or “Casbah trellis.” If you watch any HGTV shows, get furniture catalogs in the mail, or even have been shopping at Kohl’s recently, you’ve seen it. Perhaps best known as the “Moroccan trellis” or as a variation on a quatrefoil, the pattern is, suddenly, everywhere — from rugs to kitchen backsplashes.
“Recently, there’s been an increase in popularity in Moroccan design in general,” says Mark Nelson, associate professor of design studies in the School of Human Ecology at UW-Madison. “People now speak of a ‘Moroccan Style’ that goes beyond this pattern and is applied to entire interiors.”
Nelson notes the motif is “sometimes seen as a variation of the Christian quatrefoil pattern, or even a combination of the quatrefoil with the Star of David.”
The quatrefoil is an ornamental design of four lobes that somewhat resembles a perfectly symmetrical four-leaf clover, without a stem. (Why Christian? Its quadrants are said to represent Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.) It’s rounder than the Moroccan trellis shape, which usually features triangular points somewhere — between the lobes, or replacing them at the top and bottom (noon and 6) to create more of an onion or minaret shape, or on either side to make something more similar to a badge.
But there are infinite variations, with the shape sometimes stretched vertically or horizontally, fatter or thinner widths to the spaces between the repetitions, and designs placed within the shape itself.
Karina Cutler-Lake, associate professor of art at UW-Oshkosh, thinks the current popularity of the pattern “has a lot to do with how it can function within a variety of styles. It appeals to those who like a clean, geometric, modern look while at the same time speaking to those who favor the more ornamental and baroque styles of the past.”
Doug Zander of Zander’s Interiors on Monroe Street points to this style of ornamental motif (and almost paisley-like prints becoming more popular in fabrics) gaining popularity because they’re complementary to the elements of rustic chic — barnboards, vertical wooden siding and broken stone flooring — increasingly being used inside houses. The more natural, rustic elements and the colorful patterning are also a reaction to the more austere aspects of modern design popular for the past decade, says Zander. “These more ethnic patterns go with those elements.”
