Week Thirty-Two: The Wedding at Cana by Unknown Armenian Artist

August 11, 2019

Week Thirty-Two: The Wedding at Cana by Unknown Armenian Artist

Like the Ethiopian leather painting based on ancient illuminated manuscripts we just viewed, this week's featured piece from the on-line Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection is a modern prototype of a historic sacred school of art: Armenian ceramics. The glazed tile, depicting Christ's first miracle at the Wedding in Cana, when he turned water into wine, comes from the Jerusalem workshop of the Karakashian family, one of a handful of Armenian craft studios in the Holy City, keeping alive a tradition of pottery making, once developed by Armenian artisans in the Turkish city of Kutahya, a leading ceramic center of the old Ottoman Empire. At the end of World War I, the British colonial authorities invited Armenian ceramic masters from Kutahya to come to Jerusalem to restore the tiles at the Dome of the Rock shrine. They continue to carry on their trade in ever dwindling numbers to this day. The stylized figures in this image of the Cana miracle copy tiles by Kutahya potters from the early 18th century, decorating the Armenian Cathedral of St. James in Jerusalem. (John Kohan)