"Armenian Ceramics of Jerusalem" (continued) - Nurit KENAAN-KEDAR

Nurit Kenaan-Kedar's article "Armenian Ceramics of Jerusalem" (continued) is devoted to the history and artistic language of the joint Karakashian-Balian workshop, one of the key workshops of Armenian ceramics in twentieth-century Jerusalem.

Introduction and Methodology
The author continues the study begun in the previous issue of the publication, turning to the period after Mkrtich Karakashian and Nshan Balian left David Ohannessian's workshop and founded their own enterprise, "Palestine Pottery," in 1922. The research method is built on iconographic analysis of the workshop's monumental works in comparison with local Early Christian and Late Antique models.

Key Thesis
The central argument of the article is that the Karakashian-Balian workshop, while continuing the technical traditions of Kütahya ceramics, made a fundamental shift in the content of its imagery — from a floral-vegetal repertoire toward ancient Christian symbolism — reflecting the new socio-cultural reality of the artists' existence within the Jerusalem Armenian community.

Main Thematic Directions

• Monumental works for the Armenian cemetery on Mount Zion (1930s): panels depicting a cross of the khachkar type as a symbol of resurrection and the triumph of the Church, with authorial signatures in the form of interwoven Armenian initials.
• The influence of local mosaic monuments: the sixth-century mosaic with birds from the Armenian chapel-crypt and the eighth-century mosaic from the Umayyad palace near Jericho. The article examines the borrowing of symbolic motifs — the grapevine, the basket of fruit, birds, the tree of life, antelopes, and the doe — and their transformation in ceramic painting.
• The symbolism of the doe as an image of the believing soul (Psalm 41:2), and the connection of this motif with baptismal iconography.
• The 1963 works for the façade of St. James Cathedral in the Armenian Quarter — the last major joint monumental work of the two masters, executed in memory of their fathers.
• The workshop's creative process: the role of the artist who created the sketch, the transfer of the drawing onto the object, cases of direct painting on vessels, and the significance of the archive of drawings as the workshop's "dictionary of forms."
• The division of the workshop in 1964 between Sedrak Balian and Stepan Karakashian, the division of raw materials and sketches, and the preservation of a shared symbolic tradition amid the subsequent independent development of each of the resulting workshops.

Conclusion
The author concludes that over the course of several decades the Karakashian-Balian workshop developed a stable and recognizable artistic language, uniting the ancient Christian symbolism of the Holy Land with the craft tradition of Asia Minor ceramics. The division of the workshop in 1964 did not lead to a break in artistic continuity: the shared iconographic heritage continued to nourish the creative work of both new workshops, making it necessary to further study the relationship between the original sketches and their subsequent variations. The conclusion of the study is promised in the next issue of the publication.