Garo Sandrouni

Garo Sandrouni's workshop continues a craft tradition that predates his own career by more than sixty years. Armenian ceramicists first arrived in Jerusalem in 1919, brought from Kutahya in Ottoman Turkey to restore the tilework on the Dome of the Rock; when that restoration project ended, several of the potters — David Ohanessian foremost among them — chose to stay, founding Jerusalem's first Armenian ceramics workshops and establishing the hand-painted, cobalt-and-turquoise style now closely associated with the city's Old City souks. Garo Sandrouni, working alongside his wife Sonia, an artist by training, opened his own workshop in 1983 on Armenian Patriarchate Road in the Armenian Quarter, building on that inherited technique while developing the couple's own decorative vocabulary. The gallery and workshop produce hand-painted tiles, plates, bowls, vases and decorative ornaments, along with commissioned pieces made to a customer's own design — a service that distinguishes it from souvenir-oriented pottery sellers nearby. Everything is designed and painted on site rather than mass-produced, keeping the Sandrounis' output within the same workshop tradition the Armenian community brought to Jerusalem a century ago, even as the surrounding Old City has changed considerably around it.