A Bezalel Wool Carpet with Menorot and the Jerusalem Skyline. Jerusalem, ca. 1908

This striking early Bezalel wool carpet presents one of the school’s most accomplished pictorial compositions: a sweeping, idealized panorama of Jerusalem silhouetted behind three linked Art Nouveau menorahs, all framed by a border of rectangular cartouches containing the Hebrew word “Zion.” The palette—combining pale yellow, ochre, dark green, and near-black—creates a luminous evocation of Jerusalem at dawn, the city rising in golden silhouette just before sunrise. Signed “Bezalel Jerusalem” in Hebrew and inscribed with the verse from Isaiah 2:2 (“In the days to come, the Mount of the Lord’s House shall stand firm above the mountains and tower above the hills”), the carpet expresses a powerful fusion of biblical vision, Zionist aspiration, and modern decorative design.

The skyline that anchors the composition is an imaginative montage rather than a literal topographical view—an intentional aesthetic choice by early Bezalel designers. The placement of the Dome of the Rock, for example, reflects a perspective from the north, while the Tower of David echoes a vantage from the northwest. By harmonizing these disparate viewpoints, the artists created a single, emblematic portrait of Jerusalem, one that satisfied Bezalel’s commitment to recognizable Jewish landmarks, adhered to the flowing elegance of Jugendstil / Art Nouveau, and maintained the formal balance essential to textile design.

This rug belongs to the earliest phase of production at the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, founded in Jerusalem in 1906 by the sculptor and cultural visionary Boris Schatz. Conceived as a national arts workshop for the emerging Jewish community in Ottoman Palestine, Bezalel sought to revive Jewish craftsmanship by uniting European design principles with local materials and Middle Eastern motifs. Carpets became one of the school’s most successful undertakings: housed in Bezalel’s original stone building overlooking the Old City, the weaving department quickly grew to include dozens of young artisans—many from Yemenite families—who spun, dyed, and wove wool using traditional methods and natural dyes. By 1909 the school had produced nearly a thousand rugs, establishing Bezalel as a defining force in early twentieth-century Jewish art.

With its masterful balance of symbolism, ornament, and vision, the present carpet stands among the finest pictorial weavings of the early Bezalel era—a work that captures the school’s union of craft revival, national imagination, and artistic modernism.

91 X 230 cm.

LITERATURE

Jewish Carpets: A History and Guide (Oriental Rugs Series) by Anton Felton. England:1997 Published by the Antique Collectors' Club. no. 30, p. 97