Glimpse of Paradise: A colorful history of Armenian ceramics in Jerusalem

 

It is hard to imagine Jerusalem without the vibrant Jerusalem Armenian ceramics which for many are as an integral a part of the city’s urban character as the famous Jerusalem stone of its buildings.

But the remarkable ceramic art form is a relative newcomer to Jerusalem and the year-long “A Glimpse of Paradise” exhibition at the Israel Museum’s Rockefeller Museum of Archaeology, organized in collaboration with Yad Ben Zvi, the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage, the East Jerusalem Development Company and the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, celebrates 100 years of Armenian Jerusalem ceramics. It is also a testament to the Armenian Genocide, in which a million ethnic Armenians from Asia Minor and adjoining regions were slaughtered by the Ottoman Empire during World War I. 

The Armenians, who number some 10 million worldwide, mark the genocide on April 24, when the Ottoman authorities rounded up, arrested, and deported hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders from Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1915.

The exhibit will run through September 2021. Along with the use of Jerusalem stone on the city’s buildings, Jerusalem Armenian ceramic was introduced during the Mandate Period by the British, and though it has its beginnings in the Iznik and Kutahya pottery workshops in Turkey where Armenian and Muslim artisans worked together, Armenian artisans who arrived in Jerusalem following the Turkish Armenian genocide, began to incorporate their own methods and motifs making the art form uniquely Jerusalemite.

“There wasn’t Jerusalem Armenian pottery in Israel before… the Armenian artisans came here from Turkey with the tradition of the Ottoman Empire, and here they continued to produce their ceramics but not just with the motifs from Turkey,” says exhibit curator Fawzi Ibrahim. “They included images of local and Christian motifs. Some of the models here were not used in Turkey. This is local art.”

In addition, Ibrahim notes, the Armenian artisans were not only skilled ceramicists, but also savvy merchants and they made pottery which met the demands of tourists and pilgrims of different religions from all over the world, such as Armenian pottery Jewish Passover Seder plates.

The ceramics, examples of which can be found throughout both East and West Jerusalem neighborhoods on the façade of villas, on a grave in a protestant cemetery on Mount Zion, at the American Colony Hotel, on the street signs in the Old City (with the names of the street written in Hebrew, Arabic and English, the order of the languages depending on who had control of the city at the time) as well as at Muslim, Christian and Jewish houses of worship such as the Scottish Church of St. Andrews, which was  built in 1927, the Naqshbandiya Zawiya mosque on the Via Dolorosa, and the more recent ceramics of the Hessed VeRahamim Sephardic synagogue in the Mahaneh Yehuda neighborhood. The synagogue is decorated with tiles designed by Jerusalem-born artist Hagop Antreassian who began his ceramics career in 1980 and is not a member of one of the original three Armenian ceramic families.

The museum exhibit, co-curated by Nirit Shalev-Khalifa and designed by Eliran Mishal, follows the history of the ceramics from its roots in the two ceramic schools in Turkey, to the requested repair of the Dome of the Rock’s 16th-century tiles – which is what brought the Armenian artisans to Jerusalem where an ancient Armenian community already existed – through to the present day artisans who continue the tradition.

In parallel, the exhibit pays homage to another school of ceramics which was founded by Boris Schatz, a Lithuanian Jewish artist and sculptor who established the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem at the same time as the arrival of the Armenian ceramic artisans. Works from a special project by students in the Bezalel Academy’s ceramic screen-printing workshop are displayed in conjunction with the Jerusalem Armenian ceramics.

 

At one end of the inner courtyard of the Mandate-Period Rockefeller Museum, a stunning full-wall tile mosaic designed for the museum by master Armenian artisan David Ohanessian which decorates a fountain niche is juxtapostioned for the exhibit with larger-than-life ceramic beads created by Bezalel students, draped over the top of the building at the opposite end of the courtyard pool in a way reminiscent of Muslim worry beads, or a Catholic rosary.

“The whole exhibit started because of the ceramics we already have in the niche in the courtyard,” explains curator Ibrahim. “I have this niche of Jerusalem stone and Armenian ceramic in the courtyard so the exhibit within the building was something very integral to the museum. It was not something strange.”

According to the tradition, in 1913 British diplomat Marc Sykes hired master ceramic artist David Ohanessian to create a “Turkish Room” in his family home in Yorkshire, England. Then, following World War I, Sykes was at a train station in Aleppo, Syria, and encountered Ohanessian sweeping the street, among the many Armenian refugees who had escaped from Turkey in wake of the Armenian Genocide. A bit later, when Sykes was in Jerusalem, the British military governor of the city, Sir Ronald Storrs, asked for recommendations of someone to repair the tiles on the Dome of the Rock, and Sykes suggested Ohanessian.

In 1919, Ohanessian brought over a group of ceramic artists including master painter Megerditch Karakashian and master potter Neshan Balian Sr. to work on the project, which in the end was never completed.

But the men nevertheless elected to remain in Jerusalem, bringing their families over, and established their workshops.

In 1922, Karakashian and Balian separated amicably from Ohanessian and set up their own workshop on Nablus Road, and later in 1964 Karakashian’s sons, Berge and Stepan, split from Balian and opened a workshop on the Via Dolorosa. One of their first major commissions was to make the street names tiles of the Old City.

Though a highly regarded ceramicists in Jerusalem as well as in Turkey, Syria, and Egypt, Ohanessian ultimately relocated to Beirut following the outbreak of the 1948 War of Independence, where he died four years later.

A large 1000-tile ceramic mosaic located on a building on Jerusalem’s Koresh Street lends it name to the exhibit. Created and presented to the city as a sign of  hope during the second intifada by French-Armenian artist Marie Bailin—who died two years ago and who was the wife of Bailan’s son Setrak—is comprised of the Ottoman motif of the cypress tree symbolizing the tree of life, along with local palm trees and gazelles. A replica of the mosaic is on display at the exhibit.

Today the only Armenian ceramicists who are continuing the family legacy are grandsons of the original ceramic artists Hagop Karkashian and Neshan Balian Jr.

“After 100 years of making this ceramic the exhibit is a nice gesture. We are getting the recognition we deserve as Armenian artists, the first three families who came here and brought this art here which has become part of the art of Jerusalem,” said Karkashian, son of Stepan Karakashian. “It also raises the profile of real Armenian ceramics and people get to know the difference between this and the mass produced ceramics which is made in Hebron.”

He has tried to pass on the tradition to his daughter, now a university student, he says, and as a child she used to sit next to her grandfather to draw and paint, but it is uncertain if she will choose to continue the labor-intensive work.

“It’s hard work; it’s manual work which requires skill,” he says. “Of course sometimes I am concerned. This may be the end of the line. I don’t know, but what can you do.”

Ibrahim began his search for ceramic pieces in 2019 and scoured through the many boxes of tiles he knew existed in the warehouse of the Rockefeller Museum to find pieces for the exhibit.

Also on display are modern works from Armenian workshops still producing pottery today including that of Balian Jr. and Karakashian and “newcomers” the Sandroni Brothers, Vic Lepejian, and also Haifa artist Rena Panoyan.

The first section of the museum exhibit looks at the historical roots of Jerusalem Armenian pottery and includes tiles from both Turkish schools of ceramics as well as 16th century tiles from the Dome of the Rock, 18th century tiles from the Armenian St. James Cathedral and 17th and 18th century ceramic tiles which had been vandalized from King David’s Tomb in 1913. The tiles Ibrahim said, were in the style of the Iznik School but had been made in Damascus.

Originally the making of the actual pottery was also a very distinct part of the process, noted Ibrahim, but today the pottery and un-painted tiles are bought pre-made.

Under the Turkish schools, the ceramics used motifs known in Muslim art such as arabesque vegetation and trees, but as the Armenian ceramic artisans came to Jerusalem and had more freedom to incorporate different motifs into their work, they looked towards their own traditional symbols including the Armenian shield, Christian symbols and local flora and fauna. Borrowing from a Byzantine-era bird mosaic found in an Armenian chapel near the modern-day Ecole Biblique on Nablus Road, and using different shaped pots, they created a unique school of Armenian pottery with its roots in Jerusalem.

Writing about his piece in the exhibit, Lepejian explained on his Facebook page that the motifs he used included the trunk of a tree with a crucified shape representing the Armenian nation which “despite the genocide it suffered has strong roots going back 2000 years.” 

The circle at the base of the trunk is an ancient Armenian eternity symbol. The inscription below is from a 5th-century mosaic floor which reads: “In memory and salvation of Armenians.” The five birds on either side of the tree trunk represent Armenians dispersed in five continents of the world. Also represented on the piece is Armenian sacred mountain Mount Ararat and Noah’s Ark. The pomegranate between Mount Ararat is Adam and Eve, and its seeds symbolize fertility.

The seven pomegranates and seven birds on the tree symbolize the creation of the world in seven days. The eagle at the center of the tree symbolizes the strength of Armenians, and to the right is the forget-me-not flower, the official logo for the genocide centennial.”

Karakashian says the ancient bird mosaic motif is still one of the basic motifs he uses in his work. Dedicated to Armenian soldiers who fought and died in Jerusalem in the 6th century, the mosaic comprises a pattern of birds and vines.

“The vine tree would be representative of Christ (around) the birds entering eternal life,” he says. “When we make it, it is the same thing. We survived the Armenian Genocide by coming here.  Even the ceramic art survived here with us, it pertains to us. Through it in a way we gained eternal life and our art has become part of Jerusalem for eternity.”