סדנת אריחי כיפת הסלע – The Dome of the Rock Tiles Workshop

נתיב האריחים הכחולים -מקוטחיה לירושלים

דוד אוהנסיאן איש קוטחיה, אשר ייסד בשנת 1919 את אמנות הקרמיקה בירושלים , יצר כאן בסדנתו את האריחים האלה לציפוי המזבח לזכר הוריו ולזכר כל אלה מבני משפחתו אשר הלכו לעולמם. שנת 1928, בימי כהונתו של הפטריארך אלישע טוריָאן.

דוד  אוהנסיאן, כתובת הקדשה למזבח בחצר כנסית הגואל הקדוש בהר ציון

בואם של אמני הקרמיקה לירושלים, התיישבותם ויצירתם המתמשכת בה, החלו בשנת 1919 עם הגיעו של  דוד אוהנסיאן לירושלים. אוהנסיאן היה אמן בעל מוניטין ביצירת עבודות אריחים גדולות בקוטחיה, שבתורכיה ויצר עבודות מונומנטליות באיסטנבול, בקהיר ובאנגליה. לידיו נמסרו עבודות השימור של מבנים עתיקים ומסגדים בתורכיה ואף במתחם המקודש בעיר מדינה שבחצי האי ערב.

לאחר טבח העם במלחמת העולם הראשונה היו אוהנסיאן ומשפחתו פליטים בחלב שבסוריה. רונלד סטורס, מושל ירושלים, הכיר את עבודתו של אוהנסיאן באחוזת סלדמר (Sledmere House), מעונו של סר מארק סייקס, ביורקשייר שבאנגליה – והזמינו לסייע בשיקום אריחי כיפת הסלע, בני המאה ה-16 שנשרו מקירות המבנה העתיק.

 אוהנסיאן איתר אמני קרמיקה שהכיר בקוטחיה , ביניהם הקדר נישן בליאן והצייר מגרדיש קרקשיאן ובסיוע הבריטים הביאם לירושלים. בסדנתו הכשיר גם דור חדש של אמנים מקרב היתומים שהגיעו למנזר הארמני לאחר טבח העם. לאחר שפסקו העבודות במתחם הר הבית העביר  אוהנסיאן את 'סדנת אריחי כיפת הסלע' לויה דולורוזה. יצירתו בירושלים דבקה במסורת. הוא הראשון שאימץ את דגם פסיפס הציפורים, אך תוך פרק זמן קצר ראה את עצמו כמי שמייסד תפיסה חדשה ומכונן אסכולת קרמיקה ארמנית מקורית ומקומית, אוהנסיאן עזב את ירושלים ב-1948 ונפטר בביירות בשנת 1953

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The  Story of the "Dome of the Rock Tiles" workshop

In 1919, David Ohannessian (1884-1953) led the founding of the art of Armenian ceramics in Jerusalem. Prior to the First World War, Ohannessian had enjoyed a distinguished career in Ottoman Turkey as master of one of the three major studios in the historic ceramics center of Kutahya. He founded his workshop there in 1907 and named it the “Société Ottoman de Faïence.” In Kutahya, Ohannessian designed and produced tiles for new Ottoman architecture and exported pottery internationally. He also gained renown as an expert in the renovation of tiling in historic monuments. He and the other Kutahya studios contributed to a revival of the ceramic art in the Ottoman Empire, which culminated in a surge of activity between 1908 and 1914. Ohannessian produced monumental tiled installations as well as renovation tiles for buildings in Cairo, Kutahya, Istanbul, Konya, Damascus, and Medina, including tiles for the tomb of the penultimate Ottoman Sultan, Reshad V.

In 1911, the British diplomat and MP Mark Sykes commissioned Ohannessian to design and execute a grand tiled room for his Sledmere estate in Yorkshire, England. After Ohannessian’s spectacular tiles were installed in early 1914, his work was widely admired within Sykes’s broad circle of fellow British notables and military leaders—among them, Ronald Storrs.

During the Armenian genocide, in the First World War, Ohannessian was arrested. He and his family were deported from Kutahya to Syria. They survived a forced march across Anatolia in 1916 and took shelter in Aleppo, living among the community of Armenian refugees.

After General Edmund Allenby conquered Jerusalem in late 1917, British officials planned a restoration of the Dome of the Rock, which had been covered with tiles in the sixteenth century and had required periodic renewal ever since. By the end of the First World War, tiles were falling from the building and could be found for sale in antiques shops. Ronald Storrs, the Military Governor of Jerusalem and founder of the Pro-Jerusalem Society, began to search for an expert ceramicist. In late 1918, Sir Mark Sykes’s final British Foreign Office mission took him to Aleppo by way of Jerusalem, where he too saw the precarious condition of the Dome of the Rock. In Aleppo, while interviewing Armenian refugees, Sykes re-encountered Ohannessian and connected him to Governor Storrs. The Ohannessian family arrived in Jerusalem in December of 1918.

After six months of experiments and searches for appropriate local materials, Ohannessian, on his own initiative, requested safe-transit documents from the British Military Administration and briefly returned to Kutahya. There, he procured the needed clays and other minerals for the renovation of the Dome of the Rock and invited the remaining Armenian ceramicists, including the expert painter Mgrditch Karakashian and accomplished wheel potter Nishan Balian, as well as six others, to join him in Jerusalem. In the autumn of 1919, Ohannessian established his new workshop on the Via Dolorosa and named it the “Dome of the Rock Tiles.”  There, together with the other Kutahya master ceramicists, he also trained a new generation of artists from among the orphans who had arrived at the Armenian Monastery after the genocide.

In Jerusalem, Ohannessian maintained the ceramic techniques and ornamental repertoire of Ottoman and Persian traditions, but soon also incorporated the local Bird Mosaic design and other imagery from Armenian medieval and Crusader iconography. He also carried over to Jerusalem the Ottoman practice of architectural tile embellishment, creating brilliantly colored ornaments, panels, and fountains that remain a distinctive feature of the city. He also built an extensive international pottery trade, exporting ceramics to Europe, North and South America, Australia, and Africa.

Ohannessian’s testimony to his artistic self-conception can be found on an inscribed cobalt blue tile on the altar he donated to the Armenian cemetery (Saint Saviour) on Mount Zion. He explained his perception of his art and the significance of his work in Jerusalem, only ten years after arriving in the city as a refugee:  

David Ohannessian of Kutahya, in the year of the Lord 1919, established the art of ceramics in Jerusalem, and in his workshop he prepared the tiles of this holy altar, dedicated at the gate of St. Saviour Monastery in memory of his parents and all the deceased, in the year of the Lord 1928, during the patriarchate of Archbishop Yeghishe Turian.

David Ohannessian and most of his family left Jerusalem during the war of 1948 and he died in Beirut in 1953.

Wrriten by: His granddaughter Sato Moughalian

Sato Moughalian spent a decade researching Ohannessian’s works and archival records and published the history of his legacy in the book: Feast of Ashes: The Life and Art of David Ohannessian (Stanford University Press 2019).