Ancestral hands are working the clay, preparing it and shaping it into pieces of art. The same gestures, the same techniques, the same place, and you may notice some of the same facial features, as the torch is passed from fathers to sons. Being a potter in Hebron is a perfect blend of passion and fate, a family matter turned towards the world, in a form of domestic and artistic generosity.
Al Fakhuri family is what we could consider the Chosen One. Their name means “The Potter” in English, and they take their craft as seriously as blood bond, a call heard in their early years. Al Fakhuri boys stay around their elders, watching the men shaping the clay, surrounded by the comfort and security being around your own brings, and often choose the same path before hitting puberty. It’s all they know, but the precision and sense of beauty with which they let their palms and fingers wander around the draft of a soon-to-be ceramic dish are led by a discipline and work ethic only artists with drive know of.
The Potters are now located in the south of Hebron, where they can create from scratch. The ceramics are entirely crafted locally, like growing from a unique ground, birthing unwithering bowls, vases and other creations typical of the region and its people. The clay is extracted, dried, prepared and cut locally, near the pottery workshops, before being shaped and adorned into versatile dishes that are legitimate artistic pieces as much as they are household dishes. Wherever they may end up, whoever may own them, for whichever use, these ceramics will always be part of a dynasty, of Hebron’s very ground and a piece of the Al Fakhuri family.