Palestinian pottery refers to
potteryPottery is the ceramic ware made by potters. Major types of pottery include earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain. The places where such wares are made are called potteries. Pottery is one of the oldest human technologies and art-forms, and remains a major industry today...
produced in
PalestinePalestine is a conventional name used, among others, to describe a geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands.As a geographical term, Palestine can also refer to 'ancient Palestine,' an area...
throughout the ages, and pottery produced by modern-day
PalestiniansThe Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with family origins in Palestine...
.
Modern Palestinian pots, bowls, jugs and cups, particularly those produced prior to the establishment of
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
in 1948, are similar in shape, fabric and decoration to their ancient equivalents. Winifred Needler, Deputy Keeper of the Near Eastern Department at the
Royal Ontario MuseumThe Royal Ontario Museum, commonly known as the ROM, is located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's largest museum of world culture and natural history. The ROM is the fifth largest museum in North America, containing more than six million items and over 40 galleries...
of Archaeology writes in
Palestine: Ancient and Modern (1949) that this continuity demonstrates "how persistently the potter's craft clung to tradition through the centuries." R.A.
Palestinian pottery refers to
potteryPottery is the ceramic ware made by potters. Major types of pottery include earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain. The places where such wares are made are called potteries. Pottery is one of the oldest human technologies and art-forms, and remains a major industry today...
produced in
PalestinePalestine is a conventional name used, among others, to describe a geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands.As a geographical term, Palestine can also refer to 'ancient Palestine,' an area...
throughout the ages, and pottery produced by modern-day
PalestiniansThe Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with family origins in Palestine...
.
Continuity through the ages
Modern Palestinian pots, bowls, jugs and cups, particularly those produced prior to the establishment of
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
in 1948, are similar in shape, fabric and decoration to their ancient equivalents. Winifred Needler, Deputy Keeper of the Near Eastern Department at the
Royal Ontario MuseumThe Royal Ontario Museum, commonly known as the ROM, is located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's largest museum of world culture and natural history. The ROM is the fifth largest museum in North America, containing more than six million items and over 40 galleries...
of Archaeology writes in
Palestine: Ancient and Modern (1949) that this continuity demonstrates "how persistently the potter's craft clung to tradition through the centuries." R.A. Stewart Macalister, in his work
The Excavation of Gezer (1912), underlines this point prefacing his overview of Palestinian pottery throughout the ages by noting that:
"... the division into periods [of Palestinian pottery] is to some extent a necessary evil, in that it suggests a misleading idea of discontinuity - as though the periods were so many water-tight compartments with fixed partitions between them. In point of fact, each period shades almost imperceptibly into the next."
Commenting further on modern examples of Palestinian pottery, Needler notes that the clay used is of much the same composition as the ancient examples and is shaped, smoothed and baked in the same way, with the surfaces often decorated in similar painted, incised, or moulded techniques. "
RamallahRamallah is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank adjacent to al-Bireh with a population nearly 25,500...
" ware, a think-walled, pinkish drab pottery painted with simple geometric and plant designs in red, is handmade; as are the "frying pan" and the home-made braziers. Other pottery is wheel-made, largely undecorated, but often with a glossy black glaze and crude designs in bright red.
Roman period
During the Roman and early Byzantine period, common kitchen ware of the
GalileeGalilee , is a large region in northern Israel which overlaps with much of the administrative North District of the country...
region was produced primarily in
Kafr 'InanKafr 'Inan was a Palestinian village in the District of Acre around east of Acre. Until 1949, it was an Arab village situated upon ancient ruins...
(Kefar Hananya). One item produced there, the "Kefar Hananya I CE type," is also known as the "Galilean bowl." This coarse ware network was one of many sub-regional and micro-regional coarse and fine ware ceramic culture networks in operation in the
LevantThe Levant describes, traditionally, the Eastern Mediterranean at large, but can be used as a geographical term that denotes a large area in Western Asia formed by the lands bordering the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, roughly bounded on the north by the Taurus Mountains, on the south by...
.
Arab period
In exploring the similarities throughout the different eras, Macalister discusses Palestinian pottery in the
ArabArab people or Arabs are an ethnic group whose members identify along linguistic, cultural or genealogical grounds...
period and its shared characteristics with the ancient and modern pottery produced in Palestine. Of the pottery from the Arab period, he notes: "...there seem to have been large globular jars, not unlike the Pre-
SemiticIn linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages....
and First Semitic barrel-shaped jars." He describes them as having "ledge-handles, though of a different shape from the early ledge-handles," and continues to write that, "... this kind of handle is still made in native pottery." Further, he notes that jar-covers from this period are strikingly similar to those of the "earliest type of ware," the "Second Semitic jar-covers, with two loops in the middle of the saucer."
The lamps produced during the Arab period are "either of the Hellenistic type, with long spout, or the
ByzantineThe word Byzantine may refer to:Topics directly related to the Byzantine Empire* A citizen of The Byzantine Empire, or native Greek during the Middle Ages...
slipper form." The "Third Semitic lamp" which almost completely disappears during the Hellenistic period, comes into use once again during the Arab period and Macalister notes that it is still frequently used among the Arab inhabitants of Palestine.
Some of the linear decoration techniques also show a "startling resemblance to the painted ornament of the Second Semitic Period." Macalister notes that the major differences are that "The slip and the paint have a fatter, richer texture in the Arab ware than in the
AmoriteAmorite refers to a Semitic people who occupied large parts of Mesopotamia from at least the second half of the third millennium BC...
, and the painted devices are more geometrical, more mechanical, and also more minute and 'finicking' in the later than in the earlier pottery." As for similarities with the Roman period, horizontal ribbing, a key characteristic of Roman era pottery, "is as common in this period as in the Roman, but it seems to differ in outline."
Present-day Palestinian pottery
The Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange (PACE) has put together a collection of traditional pottery, including cooking pots, jugs, mugs and plates that are manufactured by men and women from historic villages like al-Jib (Gibeon),
BeitinBeitin is a Palestinian town in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate in the central West Bank, located northeast of Ramallah along the Ramallah-Nablus road...
(
BethelBethel was a border city described in the Old Testament as being located between Benjamin and Ephraim...
) and Senjel. They are hand-made and fired in open, charcoal-fueled kilns as in ancient times.
Palestinian ceramics are produced at traditional family-owned factories in
HebronHebron is the largest city in the West Bank, located in the south, 30 kilometers south of Jerusalem. It is home to some 166,000 Palestinians, and over 500 Israelis living in and around the historic Jewish Quarter. Hebron lies 930 meters above sea level...
and other cities. Covering a wide range of colorful hand painted plates, vases, hanging ornaments, tiles, cups, jars and framed mirrors, the ceramics are known for the intricate detail of their flower and arabesque patterns.
Palestinian artistsPalestinian art is a term used to refer to paintings, posters, installation art and other visual media produced by Palestinian artists.While the term has also been used to refer to ancient art produced in the geographical region of Palestine, in its modern usage it generally refers to work of...
who produce contemporary clay sculpture, like Vera Tamari from
RamallahRamallah is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank adjacent to al-Bireh with a population nearly 25,500...
, have incorporated the clay shards from ancient pieces into their work. Says Tamari,
"My own artwork is inspired by seeing the history in Palestinian land. For a time, I used a lot of shards of pottery as a theme in my clay work. You find shards of pottery everywhere because Palestine has had so many thousand of years of history that you walk on a hill and you just find these little pieces of pottery that are evidence of life that was there — pieces of jars, of plates, of bowls."
Dina Ghazal from
NablusNablus is a Palestinian city in the northern West Bank, approximately north of Jerusalem, with a population of 134,000...
use another approach, believing that abstraction will best express the essence of her ideas.
The qualities of the material she works with are very important for Ghazal, she explains that her work is an attempt to show the versatility of the medium and she hopes to challenge traditional perceptions of the use of the clay.
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