Craft & organic · 1906–1929 · Middle East & North Africa

Bezalel School

Also known as Bezalel style, Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts

The house style of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, opened in Jerusalem by Boris Schatz in 1906 with E. M. Lilien and given its definitive form by Ze'ev Raban. It joined Jugendstil and Symbolism to Persian, Syrian and Islamic ornament, Yemenite silverwork and ancient Jewish coins to make a Jewish national art: biblical and Zionist scenes in symmetrical, ornament-packed frames, hand-drawn Hebrew letters as decoration, and jewel colours heightened with gold, on books, posters, carpets, metalwork and tiles until the school closed in 1929 (its designs lingered on objects into the 1950s).

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A sample layout drawn from the style’s design choices. Its AI image is held back until someone who knows the tradition has checked it.

Use it with care

Bezalel works quote Hebrew scripture and decorate ritual objects: do not crop, distort, mirror or print biblical verses, and above all the names of God, on throwaway items (such pages are customarily buried rather than discarded), and have any Hebrew read by a fluent reader. The style's figures cast Yemenite and other Middle Eastern Jews, who modelled for its students and worked as its silversmiths and stone carvers, as picturesque biblical types, and its programme was Zionist in Ottoman and Mandate Palestine; credit the artisans, avoid exoticising living communities, and do not present it as a neutral 'Holy Land' or regional style. It also built a Jewish national art in part from Arab and Islamic sources (Persian and Syrian metalwork, Damascene inlay, Moorish pattern, and Hebrew lettering that drew on Arabic script) in a land it shared with Palestinian Arabs, whom, like Yemenite Jews, its artists took as models for biblical figures: name those sources rather than presenting the motifs as purely Jewish, and treat pieces such as 'Come to Palestine' and the Zionist insignia as political documents, not neutral travel imagery.

How it works

Set the picture inside a heavy, symmetrical frame (an arch, a cartouche or a panel) and fill the border with ornament as rich as the picture itself.
Take ornament from the Middle East and from Jewish antiquity rather than from the flowers of European Art Nouveau: filigree, Persian and Syrian metalwork and carpets, Damascene inlay and Moorish geometric pattern; the menorah, grapes, pomegranates and date palms of ancient Jewish coins and archaeology; and the native life of the land, such as the gazelle.
Draw the Hebrew letters by hand and make them part of the decoration: gilded initials, inscriptions running round the frame, words etched into the object.
Take subjects from the Bible and the national revival (the Song of Songs, Ruth, Esther, Jerusalem and the Land of Israel) and render the figures idealised, in Oriental dress, with a fine outline and rich colour heightened with gold and silver.
Seal the work with Jewish emblems such as the seven-branched menorah and the six-pointed star, and keep the composition static and emblematic rather than sinuous.
Carry one vocabulary across everything the workshop makes: books, posters, packaging, carpets, silver, brass and ceramic tiles.

Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, Jerusalem (Ottoman, then Mandate Palestine), founded by Boris Schatz in 1906 with E. M. Lilien; many of its silversmiths and stone carvers were Yemenite Jewish artisans

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition: Central symmetry defining
Framed panels defining
Space & hierarchy: Horror vacui characteristic
Single focal point characteristic
Repetition & rhythm characteristic
Sequential narrative occasional
Typography: Hand-lettering defining
Ornamented display characteristic
Brush & pen calligraphy occasional
Colour: Jewel & metallic defining
Full polychrome characteristic
Flat fields characteristic
Earth & mineral occasional
Form & shape: Stylised figuration characteristic
Biomorphic curves characteristic
Naturalistic depiction occasional
Whiplash line occasional
Surface & texture: Flat characteristic
Ornament: Abundant decoration defining
Borders & frames defining
Folk & sacred symbols defining
Floral & vegetal characteristic
Geometric tessellation characteristic
Emblems & badges characteristic
Imagery: Line illustration characteristic
Pattern & repeat characteristic
Painterly illustration occasional
Medium & production: Lithography defining
Textile & craft characteristic
Pen, brush & ink occasional
Architecture & signage occasional
Tone & intent: Spiritual & sacred defining
Utopian & idealistic characteristic
Romantic & sensual characteristic
Nostalgic & retro characteristic
Luxurious & glamorous occasional
Avoids: Dynamic asymmetry, Diagonal axis, Visual tension, Grotesque & neo-grotesque, Modular grid, Non-representational, Ornament-free, Straight photography

Palette

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Typefaces

Bezalel workshop Hebrew display lettering, which combined Arabic-script forms with German Jugendstil writing
Ze'ev Raban's hand-drawn Hebrew letters, rendered in gold at the centre of an illustrated page
Alef-Bet, 1923
Hebrew inscriptions etched, engraved and hammered into metalwork
Kiddush cups, Hanukkah lamps, plates and Bible covers

Known for

Ze'ev Raban, Come to Palestine, lithographic poster for the Society for the Promotion of Travel in the Holy Land (1929); an impression is in the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas (0000.2501)
Ze'ev Raban, The Song of Songs, 26 chromolithographed plates heightened with gold and silver
Hasefer / S. D. Saltzmann, Berlin, 1923
Levin Kipnis (verses) and Ze'ev Raban (illustrations), Alef-Bet, a Hebrew alphabet reader in which each letter is surrounded by objects whose names begin with it (Hasefer, Berlin, 1923)
E. M. Lilien, An Allegorical Wedding, sketch for a carpet in three parts
Exile, Marriage, Redemption (1906)
Bezalel ceramic murals on the Lederberg House, Rothschild Boulevard at Allenby Street, Tel Aviv (1925)
four panels of a pioneer sowing and harvesting, a shepherd, and Jerusalem with the verse Jeremiah 31:4; sources attribute them to Ze'ev Raban or to Jacob Eisenberg
Bezalel workshop Judaica with Hebrew script as the main decoration
a Bible cover acid-etched with six-pointed stars and seven-branched menorahs (1919) and a Kiddush cup (1909-1929) in the Derfner Judaica Museum; Hanukkah lamps and a mezuzah case (1910-1929) in the Jewish Museum, New York
Ze'ev Raban (design)
die-stamped copper-alloy Hanukkah lamp made by the Sharar Cooperative and the Bezalel School, with the High Priest lighting the menorah under an interlaced arch and a band of grape, pomegranate and date palm taken from ancient Jewish coins (early 1920s; Jewish Museum, New York, F 5455)
Ze'ev Raban, hammered brass doors (1922), executed by Haviv Sasson, at the Jerusalem Artists' House in the former Bezalel building