Ottoman History Podcast - David Ohannessian: Art, Exile, and the Legacies of Genocide

Episode Date: August 13, 2020

Episode 471 with Sato Moughalian hosted by Sam Dolbee David Ohannessian is one of the foremost pioneers of the ceramic styles associated today with the city of Jerusalem, but the remarkable story of how he ended up there has never been properly told. Born in 1884 outside of Eskişehir (modern-day Turkey), David Ohannessian became a master in the iconic Kütahya style of Ottoman ceramics. He worked on important architectural projects of the Ottoman government, only to be deported during the Armenian Genocide. He managed to survive, however, and continued his craft afterward in Jerusalem, where he became involved with restoration of the Dome of the Rock and opened his own ceramics studio in the Old City. Yet the past stayed with him, especially the weight of his experience during the genocide. In this episode, Sato Moughalian discusses Feast of Ashes, her recent biography of Ohannessian. She also talks about his story's personal resonance for her as Ohannessian's granddaughter. His artistic persistence provided a model of resilience to emulate in her own art, but the violence and displacement experienced by Ohannessian and his family also left a legacy of secrets and complicated grief in Moughalian's life that was long felt but seldom addressed.  « Click for More »

It's the Ottoman History Podcast. I'm Sam Dolby. In the spring of 1917, Ottoman officials sought information about an Armenian man. Here's author and award-winning flutist Sato Mugalyan reading one Ottoman official's response to this request. As reported by the chief of police commissariat, David Ohanesian is the leader of the Kütahya branch of the Dasht-Nakçı-Tün organization and is famous for his speeches about Armenian cause and ideology. On the face of it, this reply is not surprising. In the midst of the upheaval of the war, in the midst of the Armenian genocide,

an Ottoman official accused an Armenian with being part of a revolutionary group and therefore called for that man's movement to be restricted. for that man's movement to be restricted. What is interesting, and perhaps surprising, is why Ottoman officials were seeking information about David Ohannessian in the first place. Before the war, he had been one of the foremost ceramic ware masters of Kürtahya, and his designs found their way everywhere, from the Ottoman revival architecture associated with the CUP to Mark Sykes' English estate. And even in the midst of the war, even in the midst of the genocide, Ottoman officials wanted Ohanisyan to teach his craft of ceramics at Aleppo's imperial trade school.

Also interesting, and perhaps surprising about the communiqué, was the name used to refer to David Ohannissian. You heard that pause just before Sato read it, right? It's because the communiqué didn't use the name David Ohannissian. What it actually said was the convert, Ahmed Muhtar. And that pause is personal. David Ohannissian, who briefly went by Ahmed Muhtar. And that pause is personal. David Ahanisyan, who briefly went by Ahmed Muhtar, was Sato's grandfather. The fact of his forced conversion was long a family secret and is still difficult to say out loud now, even after she's written a biography of him entitled Feast of Ashes, published in 2019 with Stanford University Press' trade imprint, Redwood.

And in today's episode, we'll talk with Sato about a lot of things. The difficult choices her grandfather faced in his struggle to survive, his tenacious commitment to his art, which after the war took him all the way to restoring the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, and what both of these legacies meant for future generations of The story starts in 1884. So my grandfather, David Ohanesian, was born in a kind of remote, ethnically Armenian mountain village in western Anatolia in the province of Bursa. The village was called Muracha. As a young child, his family moved down from the mountain where the village was located to the city of Eskisehir, and he went to French Catholic schools there. At the age of 17, he moved to Kutahya to apprentice himself in the

ceramics workshop of the Minassian brothers. And by the time he was 23 years old, in 1907, he had opened his own independent workshop in Kutahya, which would come to be called the Société Ottoman de Fayence. Historically, Kütahya was an important Ottoman ceramic making center. It was the second most important after the principal imperial ceramic making center of Iznik, which is the more famous one. Can you describe what these ceramics look like? Iznik ceramics, we're probably all familiar with through the tiling of the great imperial monuments in Istanbul, the gorgeous tiles that have a white background that are painted

in blues and greens with bursts of red and other colors. They're used extensively in Sultanahmet, the blue mosque, the famous blue mosque. extensively in Sultanahmet, the Blue Mosque, the famous Blue Mosque, and of course, the art reached its peak with the Rustem Pasha Mosque in Istanbul. Kütahya also produced ceramics along the same lines because they had access to the same materials that were needed. But in Kütahya, there were entirely different visual patterns used. The visual repertoire was quite different from the strict patterns of the imperial works. In Kutahya, you had very playful figurative images, and then a whole range of domestic wares, lemon squeezers, rosewater bottles, bowls, plates, inscribed tiles, and this work continues

until today. And how did your grandfather become involved in it? Well, he came from a family where a number of generations had participated in the Kutahya trade, and so he was aware that he was partly descended from ceramics makers, But when he was trying to decide what he would do with his life at the age of 17, he was living in Constantinople, and he had seen the wares that were being produced by that generation of Kutahya craftsmen. But he was also extremely inspired by these grand monuments that I just mentioned. So he moved to Kutahya at the age of 17 and apprenticed himself, and then six years later had mastered the intricacies of the art form and also the bureaucratic needs that were necessary to set up a workshop.

In the period when my grandfather was active there, there were three studios. One of them was run by Mehmet Emin, who was at that period, between the Young Turk Revolution and the beginning of World War I, he was the senior ceramicist, and he was extraordinarily accomplished. The second studio was owned by the Minasyan brothers, Garabed and Harutyun. And then the third studio was run by my grandfather, David Ohanesyan. played an important role in the sort of last phase of this Kütahya revival before the First World War because of the modernizing projects, because of the emphasis on supporting new architectural works. And the style of architecture that developed in this period in the early 20th century and then accelerated under the Young Turk regime, this nationalist style, as we call it now, but Ottoman revivalism, as it was called then, incorporated elements of classical Ottoman

and Seljuk architecture. It was very, like, retrospective kind of architectural style. And since there was the possibility of using tiles, the architects, Mimar Kemalettin, Vedat Tek, took advantage of this revival in Kütahya and incorporated a lot of tile works into this new architecture. So this created a tremendous amount of business in Kütahya. I mean, starting pretty much with the grand post office in Sirkaci, the Vedat Tek's building, which incorporates a lot of Kütahya tile work. And through this period, there's a great deal of tile production you see in the boat landings. I mean, now today, there are ferry boat landings in Istanbul, which are covered with tiles. Those tiles were initially produced in Kütahya. I mean, they've been replaced since the original production because external tiling is sensitive to the environment.

But those tiles that you see, the Vakif Hans and various other buildings around Istanbul that were built in this period, in the early 20th century, those were Kütahya tile creations. So all three of the studios were involved in this production. And the production extended, I mean, not only in the capital city of the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople, but the ceramicists in my grandfather's period were producing tiles for Cairo and other places. And of course, my grandfather's career extended as far as England in those days. And additionally, all three studios were producing tableware for export and custom production. So it was extremely prolific, the output of Kütahya in that very brief period,

right around the time of the Young Turk Revolution until the outbreak of the Great War. The studios were very busy. Another of the Young Turk modernizing projects was to set up a Ministry of Endowment Scientific Commission for Repairs and Construction. So during that period between 1908 and, well, 1909, actually in 1914, under Mimar Kemal Atin, the Kutahya ceramicists were doing a lot of sort of historical renovation of great tiled monuments, you know, as far away as Mecca and Damascus. And Ohanesian was right at the center of this. So he had acquired in those few years an intimate knowledge of different ceramic techniques from the 13th through the center of this. So he had acquired in those few years, an intimate knowledge of

different ceramic techniques from the 13th through the 18th centuries. Could you talk about that English connection a little more? Sure. As people who are interested in Ottoman history and world history in this period, will know the name Mark Sykes. Sykes' family had a very extensive estate in Yorkshire, and the seat of their estate was a manor house called Sledmere, which in May of 1911 burned to the ground. And Mark Sykes, who had spent the early part of his life traveling extensively throughout Anatolia and Mesopotamia and writing about his travels, as he rebuilt his house, he wanted to add something to show his affection for the East. He learned from Mimar Kemal Atin that in Kutahya, this tile art was going through a period of revival. And later in 1911, he went to Kutahya

while he was on a diplomatic trip to the Ottoman Empire. And at that point in October of 1911, he met David Ohanesian, hit it off with him, which was probably helped by the fact that they had a language in common, which was French. And Sykes commissioned Ohannessian to help design and execute a grand tiled room for his rebuilt sledmere house. This commission took a couple of years. It was done remotely. Ohannessian traded architectural elevations with Sykes' architect, Walter Briarley. They chose various tile patterns from the great imperial mosques, and Ohannessian created a new design incorporating many of these patterns, and the tiles were put in place by the beginning of 1914. Since Sykes was so well connected, a lot of other British aristocrats, military officers, passed through the house, saw Ohannessian ceramics, and became aware of this production in Kutahia. This would play an important role in Ohannessian's life a few years later.

this would play an important role in Ohannessian's life a few years later. He understood very well from a very early age this phenomenon of Orientalism, you know, of this way that people in other parts of the world look at the East and, you know, assign it a kind of romantic, diminished, whitewashed series of symbols. Like, he understood that very well, and he used it to his advantage. I mean, Ohanesian was a brilliant bargainer. He made his clients feel like they were getting away with a great deal. I mean, you can see that in Mark Sykes' letters to his architects, how Sykes is talking about how he spent the whole day bargaining and got the price down to whatever.

But I knew on the other side that my grandfather had set a price that was twice as much as what he wanted to get so that the person on the other side would feel the pride of succeeding against this Easterner. How did things change in World War I? The ceramics industry, but also David Ohanisian himself. In the early months of the conflict, the change came because so many of the men were being conscripted into the army. And so the production diminished because of that, although it didn't stop. I mean, in spite of the outbreak of war, there were still commissions coming from the government to create tiles for these boat landings and for train stations. But, of course, as we know, the situation for the Armenians took a very dramatic turn for the worse.

I mean, it had been deteriorating over the last few years, but in various major cities, various major cities, Armenians were being rounded up and sent either by train or by foot toward the Syrian regions, toward Aleppo. Some people were exempted. Initially, my grandfather was exempted, and others in Kutahya were exempted through the governor at the time, Faik Ali Bey, the Armenians of Kutahya had been witnessing the deportation of Armenians from the western Anatolian provinces, because outside of Kutahya was one of the main stops on this, the Anatolian rail line. And so as Armenians had been coming through, and they were coming through in the thousands, you know, some of them were in encampments by the railroad station. And Faik Ali Bey, who was one of the more benevolent Ottoman officials, he had allowed Armenians from the city to get passes to go to Alayunt train station, which is a few kilometers east of

the city center, and claim any Armenians who were there, who were, air quotes, relatives of theirs, to come back to the city and stay with them. So in this way, hundreds of Armenians were at least temporarily saved. So Ohanasian, among others, went and claimed 45 or 50, over a period of months, Armenians who had been deported from other cities, he claimed them, brought them back home. Complaints started filtering back to Constantinople about what was happening in Kutahya that, you know, there were all these Armenians who were gathering there, and this was viewed locally as a danger. So, Faik Ali Bey actually organized for them to be distributed around the villages around Kutahya so they could, you know, work as laborers and earn their keep and also be less visible.

Ohanesian was arrested in 1915 during the temporary absence of Faik Ali Bey from Kutahya. about a dozen Armenians were arrested and informed that either they could convert to save themselves and their families from deportation, or they would be deported. Ohanesyan and the others had seen what was happening, and they were aware of the risk to their lives and to their families' lives. So these 12 Armenians who were called to the government house during Faik Ali Bey's absence were ordered to convert. So they all filled out the applications to convert. And when Faik Ali Bey came back, he said that these orders should be torn up, that Armenians would not want to convert. But Ohannessian had been personally threatened by the police chief,

who told him that if he did not convert, that this man would murder his wife. So Ohannessian went through the conversion. It was a forced conversion. I mean, he was devoutly Christian, but he, like many, many other Armenians in that period, felt that to save his life or to save the life of his loved ones, his families, that he would go through the conversions. For some people, in some places, this was a matter of filling out paperwork. For my grandfather, it was an intensely painful process. For him, he had to declare his belief in Islam.

He had to publicly make the profession of faith. And it's possible that he was also circumcised. I don't know. And he was given a new name. It was an incredibly painful experience for him because his Armenian Christianity was at the core of his identity. His wife was especially devout, so much so that it really wasn't talked about very much in my family. It was kind of a secret that was carried within the family. It did, in

fact, save my grandfather's life. But there was a different consequence. So when Ohanesian refused to tear up his conversion application, Faik Ali Bey denounced him and said, okay, you know, here I am being humane, telling you not to convert. You know, why are you insisting on going through this? Faik Ali Bey didn't realize that my grandmother's life had been threatened. And so he used this opportunity to deport the whole family. This governor is protecting Armenians. Yes. You have Armenians who, while he's gone, sign paperwork to convert to Islam with the idea that that will

protect them from the ravages of the deportations and massacres that they see happening every day. And when this governor returns, he tells them that they shouldn't convert. And everyone except Ohanissian rescinds that commitment to convert. And because Ohanissian converted, he is deported. Yes, it's a hall of mirrors. It does require some unpacking. So in the late summer of 1916, my grandfather, grandmother, and their three young children finally arrive in Aleppo after months of forced march, periods of time encamped. And there is, at this point, there are tens of thousands of Armenian refugees, like, just seeking shelter in Aleppo. So even though they're there without official permission. They help each other, they pass information.

You know, there's kind of an informal economy that allows many of them to survive, although many died of disease and starvation. And my grandfather also had almost died of typhus, you know, during the forced march. So after several months of, you know, kind of reorienting themselves and finding ways to make a very marginal, eke out a marginal existence there, he starts thinking again about how he might try to revive his art. And he goes to, he discovers that there's an industrial school in Aleppo, the, you know, school of arts and crafts in Aleppo, which is part of this earlier Ottoman government project, in Aleppo, which was part of this earlier Ottoman government project. And I believe that the Aleppo school was founded in 1911. So he goes and he introduces himself and discovers that there's no ceramics department there. And they're interested in a ceramics department because there's, you

know, people are looking to the end of the war, to new construction projects. And the director of the school thinks this is a good idea. But of course, he can't engage my grandfather in any way until Ohannessian has papers to remain in the city. So my grandfather goes to the local gendarmerie, and he puts an application in. Using his Muslim name, he sends a letter to old colleagues of his, you know, asking for references, with the idea that if he can get papers to remain in the city, he can find a way to restart his art there. But this plan goes very bad for him. This is the beginning of 1917. The police station immediately sends messages in all directions to the capital, to Kutahya, trying to understand what Ohanasian or what Ahmed Muchtar is actually doing in Aleppo. And what ends up coming back are denunciations from Kutahya and it's just sort of bureaucratic

correspondence from Constantinople. I mean, they have bigger things to worry about, I think, than what's needed in an art school in Aleppo. But what ends up happening is that when my grandfather goes back to the police station, he's informed that he's going to be deported with his family to Meskene. So Meskene is a village by the Euphrates River, which has been the site of horrific, brutal massacres of Armenians. Like tens of thousands of Armenians have died there.

And it's not actually geographically that far from Aleppo, but it couldn't be more different. So in February of 1917, the family is deported there. In the meantime, there's a whole trail of correspondence going back and forth between Aleppo, Kutahya, Constantinople, trying to figure out what should be done. It seems like once again, how much did he have to sacrifice personally to make that conversion, and yet it didn't protect him from deportation? It didn't protect him from deportation, but we can also see that he was trying to make the best of a horrific situation by using his Muslim name to obtain permission to remain in Aleppo. So, I mean, I think this is a really good illustration of where biography and micro histories, as academic historians like to call them,

can play a really important role in illuminating the agency of individual actors, because, you know, in the Armenian Genocide, we see the sweep of the larger, you know, political actors, political forces on the lives of, you know, hundreds of thousands of individuals. But we're only just starting to see, you know, through the publication of memoirs, and even through the informal publication of memoirs, the many, many individual stories that still remain. The story of Meskene, thankfully, ends after just a few months, when the Minister of the Interior allows the governor of Aleppo to, and the local governors to release Ohanesium to send him back to Aleppo. He doesn't accomplish the task of setting up a ceramics department in Aleppo. I think he's like

further traumatized and wants nothing more than to just stay out of sight. Throughout this period, you see these stories where people who had very specialized skills that were important to the national economy, as they put it, would be saved, would be allowed to carry on with their work. complete the railway. I mean, they knew they would be constructing railway, they would be constructing stations, there would be other government buildings that would be taking form during this period. Some politicians could see the need for a continuation of this art form, which was, you know, very much a part of the Ottoman heritage, cultural heritage. So he's sent back to Aleppo, the British conquer Aleppo, late in 1918. And Mark Sykes signs up to conduct a three-month mission. He leaves Europe. He goes to Egypt. He meets with General Allenby there. He proceeds to Jerusalem, where he stays with his old friend,

Ronald Storrs, who's the new military governor of Jerusalem. And Sykes and Storrs walk around the old city of Jerusalem. They, you know, they look at all the damage. They look at the precarious conditions of the various holy sites, including the Dome of the Rock, which had been kind of neglected through all this period and whose tiles were in particularly fragile state. And they recognize that the Dome of the Rock, the tiling of the Dome of the Rock is in a dangerous condition and is something that both men want to see addressed. They don't really know how this can be done. And Storrs starts sending out messages through his networks, you know, to see like what can be done about the tiling of the Dome of the Rock.

And nobody could find a source of tiles in this kind of extremely chaotic circumstance at the very end of World War I. So Sykes is very aware of this need in Jerusalem, and he proceeds to Aleppo. And as I mentioned, like one of his tasks there is to set up the provisional British Administration and to interview Armenian survivors. So in this period of days, between the end of November and the beginning of December 1918, when he's interviewing Armenians in Aleppo and taking their testimonies, he re-encounters David Ohannessian. Sykes immediately writes to Ronald Storrs and tells him that, you know, Ohannessian is there and alive, and arranges for Ohannessian and his family to travel to Jerusalem with the idea that he might consult on this planned British restoration of the Dome of the Rock.

So the man whose craft had been inspired by the tile work of Istanbul's Ottoman monuments that he saw as a boy was now going to be involved in the restoration of Ottoman-era art, no longer under Ottoman rule. He went there and, you know, then there was this period of experimentation. He went there and, you know, then there was this period of experimentation. There were old kilns that survived on the Haram from previous renovations of the Dome of the Rock, which basically every time a new sultan was enthroned, they would give money for the restoration of the greatest holy sites. the greatest holy sites. And so you see in the 19th century and before that, that there were a series of major restorations of this monument. Ohannessian goes there and he's trying to reinstate the techniques that he had used in Kutahya, the wood-fired kiln. But he has a great technical knowledge. So he understands like what has to be done and what is needed,

and embarks on the process of, like, searching for these materials or suitable substitutes in Palestine. When he finds that, you know, it's a futile search, he requests permission from the British military for safe passage papers for him to return to Kutahya to obtain materials to create tiles for the renovation of the Dome of the Rock. And he's granted these documents, and he's also granted specific letters asking the current Mutsasarif of Kutahya for help in obtaining the necessary materials. And Ohnesian and his family traveled back. And at that time, Kutahya is in terrible condition. I mean, many of the Armenians have died or left or ended up being deported. The trade is entirely moribund there.

Some of the ceramicists left for Greece, and some of the Armenians who remained agreed to come back with him to work in his new workshop in Jerusalem. So, he returns to Jerusalem with materials and with eight or ten people who had been working in Kutahya as Armenian ceramicists. Do you know what materials he brought back? Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that he found the greatest difficulty finding in Palestine was kaolin, which is the white china clay. I mean, the clay that gives that characteristic glowing white effect in classical period Ottoman ceramics. needs a series of other minerals like cobalt to make the blue, antimony for the yellow, manganese,

chromium, and quartz and flint for the glaze. He brings back a supply of these things. And fortunately, the Persian tiles that remained on the Dome of the Rock that kind of gave an indication of, you know, what the original 16th century tiling might have looked like were made on a blue. I mean, they used a lot of blue background. It was less reliant on this kale and this white china clay. And because of this problem in finding the white clay in Palestine, he started using the color, the color backgrounds of the Dome of the Rock. You see a crossover between the colors that are used in Persian ceramics and in Kutahya ceramics, of course, because the Persian tradition found its way to Kutahya and influenced the aesthetics there. But the use of dark, brilliant backgrounds solved a technical problem for Ohannessian in Jerusalem, which is that he could use different clays and different

methods, different kinds of slips, the coating of the clay to produce his wearish there. And as a result, I mean, you see, rather than the white background that we see in 18th century Kutahya tiles and that are on display in the Armenian Cathedral in Jerusalem, which is decorated with early 18th century Kutahya tiles, we start seeing in Ohannessian's vases and plates and the pottery wares that he was making the use of a dark background, but the dark background draws its color scheme from the tiling of the Dome of the Rock. And I mean, does he continue on the Dome of the Rock project? Is he the one who's in charge of it to the end? So he works on this in 1919, 1920, 1921. At the very end of 1921, the British encourage the creation of the Supreme Muslim

Council, which goes into effect in 1922, and sort of hands back the politically precarious project of retiling the Dome of the Rock, because this is probably not something that should have been taken on by the Christian administration of Jerusalem in the first place. It's handed back to the Muslim community. After a while, the Muslim community, the Supreme Muslim Council, hires Mihmar Kemal Atin to come from Istanbul to Jerusalem to oversee the whole restoration. And at this point, the two men meet, Ohannessian and Kemalettin, who had worked together very, very productively for years in the Ottoman framework. And at first, Kemalettin greets and acknowledges Ohannessian and praises, you know, his technical and artistic expertise.

But pretty quickly, I think he realizes that if this work is done in Jerusalem, if the work is transferred into the workshops of, you know, of Christian ceramicists, that this is really going to mean the utter demise of any tile trade in the historic Ottoman centers of ceramic making. And so he puts them off the project, the Ohannessian and his group of ceramicists are put off the project. And although Ohannessian did apply tiles to the Dome of the Rock, there was an earthquake in 1927, which damaged some of the tile work. And then the project really was not completed until the 1960s, at which point the Kutahya trade had recovered and proceeded on a new sort of technical footing, and the tiles were produced in Kutahya.

The tiles that we see today on the Dome of the Rock were produced in Kutahya actually by, in part, descendants of Mehmet Emin, who are now known as the Chinicholu family. But even as he engaged in the work of historical restoration, the pain of Ohanissian's past, and in particular, his forced conversion, remained, and it would have ripple effects in his family. He never participated in the Christian rites again. I mean, it was just he felt that, I mean, he attended church. But he wouldn't take communion? He wouldn't take communion. I mean, it was clear from the fact that he wouldn't take communion that this was hugely

consequential to him emotionally. And, you know, he suffered from periods of depression in the years after he arrived in Jerusalem, like pretty severe depression. And it was known. like pretty severe depression. And it was known. I mean, people in Kutahya knew that, you know, he had converted. People in Jerusalem knew that he had converted. Of course, his family knew that he had converted. And they also understood that it was a forced conversion. But Armenians who were placed in the same position, many of them thought that they were the only ones. They didn't understand how widespread this was.

I mean, Selim Derengil and Ron Suni have put the numbers anywhere between 100,000 and 300,000 Armenians who forcibly converted to Islam during this period. to Islam during this period. So it's a much, much more widespread phenomenon than we talk about right now, and probably an area that deserves a lot more study. But for my family, it was extraordinarily painful. And my mother kind of kept the secret to almost the end of her life, like in the final months of her life, she discussed it with my brother. And I only learned of this five or six years ago, and it came as a huge shock to me, because there was this tremendous sense of pain around the memory. And because the memory hadn't been kind of brought to light and explained and put into context, it's as though the pain of the memory was passed down in my family without an understanding of the actuality of it. And when I first decided that I wanted to write a

book, my cousins actually asked me not to write about this episode. But as I did the research, and I found, you know, documents that gave me his converted name, I realized that it was a very important story to bring to light. So what did Ohan Nisyan do with his pain and his increasing marginalization from restoration work? Basically what you might expect, given his story so far. Well, he got to work. He set up a new studio on the Via Dolorosa in a building that he was given access to by Jerusalem's Mufti and, you know, with agreement and encouragement of the British military administration. The British had set up

the Pro-Jerusalem Society, which was headed by Charles Ashby, a prominent figure in the British arts and crafts movement. And the Pro-Jerusalem Society's function was to oversee all the elements of reconstructing, restoring Jerusalem, establishing new series of crafts, all the things that fell outside the scope of a military administration. They were very, very supportive of Ohanestian and his efforts. I mean, Charles Ashby had spent much of his career in England trying to revive like Renaissance medieval style guild studios in various art forms. And so I think he was quite thrilled to discover someone who was actually practicing an art in the same manner that it had been practiced, you know, for the centuries gone by. I mean, Ohannessian was using a wood-fired kiln. He was grinding minerals by hand. It was a very, very traditional labor

practice in the studio of his on the Via Dolorosa. You mentioned that there were kilns there already. And does that mean there were local practices of ceramic making? Or is he bringing this back to Jerusalem in some way? Clay is one of the most common minerals in the whole world. So almost every society uses earthenware in some way. And certainly Palestine was the same. I mean, there were many artistic traditions in earthenware. But what they didn't have was polychrome glazed ceramics. There was not a polychrome glazed ceramic tradition in Palestine at that time. So Ohannessian was bringing the Anatolian ceramic production techniques to Palestine. And so this was

something different. And pretty quickly, you know, the Jewish community followed. They actually sent some prospective students to Europe to learn techniques. And the Bezalel School in Jerusalem had its own ceramics department that was producing ceramics. But getting back to Onesian, the Pro-Jerusalem Society gave him lots of commissions. I mean, one early commission was to produce street signs for the old city. So he produced these 12 tile panels with the new street names that, you know, the Pro-Jerusalem Society and others had kind of hammered out. And these were in three languages with English on the top, English, Arabic, and Hebrew.

And so Onesian used the color scheme from the Dome of the Rock and basically projected those colors throughout the old city by way of these ceramic street name tiles. So when Ohannessian went back to Kutahya, he brought, as I mentioned, a number of Armenian ceramicists, and among them were Nishan Balian, who was a very gifted wheel potter, and Mugurdi Karakashian, who was an extraordinarily gifted painter of ceramics, and they worked in Ohannessian's studio for a while. In 1922, they split off and founded their own joint studio on Nablus Road. And the descendants of those families continue to operate workshops in Jerusalem today. So they kept the art going after 1948. And their

production methods are a little bit different, but they've kept the art alive. The story of the ceramic art from Kutahya at the beginning of the 20th century to Palestine after the First World War is literally a material story of resilience and reconstitution. It was an art form that was extremely local, that was based on the availability of materials that were indigenous to its region of origin. And yet, through the vector of my grandfather, this art was transplanted in Palestine where those materials were not available at all. And yet, because of his persistence, because of Ohannessian's persistence and his desire to create an art, to found a studio, to employ some of the many Armenian refugees in Jerusalem at that time, he found a way to remake his art, which continues

to flourish today. And how long did David Ohanissian remain in Jerusalem making this art? So he was there until 1948. The family lived in Bacca, and they, it was extremely dangerous. I mean, neighbors of theirs were getting shot and killed. There were snipers on rooftops, bombings. And one by one, six of the seven children left, one child moved to Armenia, and everybody else like scattered around the Middle East or went to England, except for one who remained, you know, who had hoped to try to preserve the studio. But Ohanesian had a visa from, you know, through Prince Muhammad Ali Tufik, whose Maniel Palace he had helped decorate back in 1911. And so he went to Cairo to try to see what the

prospects would be of setting up another workshop there. Cairo had its own, as you know, huge political upheaval. So he left Cairo in May of 1952 for Beirut. And in Beirut, he was just in the process of trying to set up a ceramic studio at the American University of Beirut at the end of 1953 when he had a massive stroke and died. to keep creating, to keep working on his standard of production, his artistic ideas, you know, who was constantly experimenting and producing. And, I mean, we can see through the story of his life that in spite of, you know, horrific circumstances, deportation, not once but twice, flight from the dangers of the war, the Arab-Israeli war. He kept trying to produce ceramics. I mean, until his last conscious day, he was trying to find a way to make ceramics. So it was this kind of drive that I just admired so much. And I think this is

not only his story, but it's a story of, you know, so many people who survived these horrific geopolitical events whose names are lost to history. I mean, his life reflects the life of many others whose histories were not recorded. I knew that he was an artist. I mean, some of my earliest childhood memories came, you know, looking at the few pieces of his that my mother managed to carry with her through her own flights from various places, including our family's flight from Alexandria, Egypt to the United States when I was an infant. We didn't bring much. We didn't have much, but she did keep a few pieces of his ceramic work. And so, you know,

they made a tremendous impression on me. I mean, I felt her love for her father. And so just as we had these tremendous memories of pain and loss and sort of the death of parts of our identities, there was also this feeling of love for my grandfather as an artist and feeling of great respect for him. I just didn't know very many of the particulars until I started really seriously researching. I knew the great outlines of his life, but once I started researching, you know, doing the kind of archival work, And once this cache of his documents that had been preserved by his eldest daughter came into my possession, a lot of the pieces started getting filled in. There is this constant of finding a way to do the thing he knows how to do. Yeah. And I mean, I guess I see a faint reflection of that in myself. You know, I decided when I was 14 that I wanted

to be a musician. I wanted to be a flutist. And my parents were completely dismayed by this idea. And I, you know, I just insisted. To me, it wasn't a choice. It was something I had to do. I didn't really understand the degree to which I inherited a piece of this drive from my grandfather. And so I also suffered from incredible depressions, like really serious clinical depressions in my teenage years, my 20s, 30s. And I felt this constant sense of pain and loss. And I mean, I can now retrospectively call it grief or the desire to grieve. I didn't really understand it at the time as anything more than just a hollow, cloudy feeling. All these experiences that my family had had, and I didn't even understand all of them at the time, but all

of this loss and dispossession, they didn't have the time to actually grieve these things. Their job was to survive, to find a way to make a living, to support their children and provide for their well-being. I mean, this was like two generations that went through horrific loss without the chance to kind of examine it, turn it over, digest it, and without even the vocabulary to kind of examine it, turn it over, digest it, and without even the vocabulary to express it. In 2014, Sato went to Eskişehir in the hope of visiting the village in which her grandfather was born. She drove there with some Turkish friends. Right outside the city, the climate and the environment changes to sort of a desert.

I mean, you see all these microclimates, like in between Eskisir and Muraca, which is only 35 miles away. But it's like a sign of the tectonic complexity of the region, which again, that tectonic complexity produced this like richness of materials from which so many of these art forms emerged. The village that she was headed for had a population of 14 people, according to government figures. When she got there, she talked to anyone she could. They were mostly elderly descendants of Balkan Mohhajish. One old man told her and her friends that he respected what she was doing,

and then pointed the way to the ruins that they still referred to as the Armenian village. The air was crisp, and even though it was July, it was clear and breezy, and you could smell the pines, and it was just gorgeous. And I ran around. I mean, I just ran around like a child myself. I couldn't believe that I had actually managed to refine the place where my grandfather was born. And in the course of running, I saw these rounded stones underneath the grass. And when I stopped at one point, I realized that they were gravestones

and that I had just found myself in a cemetery. And, you know, the Armenian tradition was not to have upright stones, but to have flat stones on the graves. And I realized that, you know, in this moment of complete bliss of having refound a place that's so important in my family's history that I was actually standing on the graves of my own ancestors. And it was devastating. It was devastating. But it was also a way of closing the circle. I found the place where my grandfather was born. And I found the place where four centuries of my relatives were buried, and that was a moment of tremendous grief, and it was as though that grief was not only my grief, but the grief of all the generations who had been displaced and dispossessed. So in the course of my reading psychology, I learned about a phenomenon called complicated grief or incomplete grief, and I realized that that was very much a feature of my family. And when you're in a circumstance where you're not really feeling entirely safe and secure, you can't really complete the work of grief

because you don't have the freedom to do it. You know, when you're still on the run, or when you feel under threat, or when your history is denied by governments, it's difficult to feel the sort of internal safety and security that's necessary to give yourself over to the experience of grief. And I think that was very much true in my family. I think between, you know, my grandparents, two deportations, between their flight from Palestine, their flight from Egypt, their flight from Beirut, they had other things to deal with.

And I think what happened as a result of not really being able to perform the rituals of grief, it robs you of a piece of yourself as you understand yourself to exist in the world. And I think I, for decades, was just carrying around these questions. I mean, questions that I couldn't even identify myself. I just experienced them as sort of bodies of grief. And so it wasn't until embarking on this whole project and putting

together the pieces of my grandfather's life, publishing them, going back to the places where he had lived, retracing his footsteps, that I had the opportunity at each point to grieve what had been lost. You know, in the end, I feel I have a much clearer sense of like who we were as a family who we are as a family how we fit into the world what we contributed to the world what were the forces that acted upon us what were the forces that we in turn you know contributed to the life of an art or the life of a community or the life of many different aspects of Armenian culture. And so this has been a kind of great reconstruction for me and a way of feeling myself whole in the world.

That's Sato Mogalian. Her book is Feast of Ashes, The Life and Art of David Ohanissian, published in 2019 by Redwood Press, the trade imprint of Stanford University Press. Of course, as always, you can find more information on our website, ottomanhistorypodcast.com,

including a bibliography, images, and links to the music on this episode, which is from Blue Dot Sessions, Zeyt Rigueros, and Satomo Galyan. You can also join us on Facebook, where the community of listeners is over 35,000 strong. That's it for this episode of the Ottoman History Podcast. Until next time, take care.