Bezalel
[Heb. Betsal’el].
Israeli Academy of Arts and Design. It takes its name
from the biblical artist Bezalel, son of Uri, one of the
craftsmen whom Moses commissioned to build and decorate
the Ark of the Covenant (Exodus 31:1–5,35:30–32). It was
founded in Jerusalem in 1906 by Boris Schatz
(1866–1932), a Jewish artist of Latvian origin, and was
at first known as the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts.
Schatz also founded the Bezalel Museum (incorporated
into the Israel Museum). The inhabitants of 19th-century
Palestine, both Jewish and non-Jewish, had produced
mostly folk art, ritual objects and olive-wood and
shell-work souvenirs, so the founding of Bezalel
provided a professional and ideological framework for
the arts and crafts in Jerusalem. A major part of
Schatz’s school was the workshops, which, starting with
rug-making and silversmithing, eventually offered 30
different crafts; they employed workers and students, of
whom there were 450 in 1913, in manufacturing, chiefly
for export, decorative articles ranging from cane
furniture, inlaid frames and ivory and wood carvings, to
damascened and filigree objects. For Schatz, Bezalel was
not merely a commercial enterprise, but a stage towards
a Utopian society, as adumbrated by John Ruskin, whom he
admired. Intended to create an original national style,
Bezalel artefacts were a mixture of oriental styles and
techniques with Art Nouveau features and influences from
the Arts and Crafts Movement. The subjects were a
combination of traditional Jewish images, Zionist
symbols, biblical themes, views of the Holy Land and
depictions of the flora and fauna of Palestine.
Bezalel Academy Building with the Dead Sea in
background, 2009
