A workshop, kept

The atelier was opened in 1946 in the Old City of Jerusalem, on the street leading from the Damascus Gate down toward the patriarchate, and it has done one thing since: it has written sacred texts in the Hebrew tradition for the households, congregations, and study halls that ask for them. The same hand also accepts iconography commissions from the parish communities of the Old City when asked, a practice the workshop has kept alongside its scribal one for as long as both communities have lived next to each other.

The parchment is klaf, prepared in the kosher manner from calf or deer hide, ruled by sirtut before writing. The quill is cut from a turkey or goose feather. The ink is deyo, a walnut-gall preparation, ground and mixed in the workshop. For the iconography commissions, the board is linden, sometimes cypress, prepared with cloth and ten thin layers of gesso, and the gold is laid in twenty-three carat leaf on a bole of red Armenian clay. Both methods are old and have not been improved on.

Sacred texts are not signed at all; the scribe's hand is recorded in the workshop ledger and is otherwise withheld. An icon, where one is commissioned, is signed on the reverse, in Greek, with the date and the patron, in the manner of the parish-side practice. In neither case does the maker's name appear on the face of the work.

The order of writing is the order of inquiry. There is no fast track. A mezuzah takes three weeks, a ketubah a season, a Sefer-Torah programme several years. A small icon takes six weeks, a larger one a season, and an iconostasis programme a year or longer. The atelier does not undertake delivery by a fixed date except by separate written agreement.

The workshop is small, kept by two scribes, one iconographer, and an apprentice, and it intends to remain small. New apprentices are taken when there is room and only on the recommendation of a rabbi of a recognised congregation or a hieromonk of a recognised parish, whichever community the candidate belongs to.

Visitors are welcome by prior letter, on weekdays, between the hours of nine and noon, outside the High Holy Days, the Great Lent, and Holy Week. There is no shop on the day of the visit and no objects for sale.