My Grandmother and Her Adornments: An Art Exhibition of Palestinian Jewelry

These were part of the opening words shared by the organizers and participating Jerusalemite artists at My Grandmother and Her Adornments, an exhibit held at the Palestinian Art Court—al-Hoash on al-Zahra Street in Jerusalem on June 20, 2026. Before inviting visitors to wander through the artworks inspired by Palestinian heritage, curator Manar Idrissi spoke about the intersection of art and memory. She addressed the erasure of visual heritage, the systematic destruction of cultural identity, and the potential of art as a tool for preservation, resistance, and social transformation.

More than an exhibition, My Grandmother and Her Adornments was a project carried out by That Jewelry Studio in partnership with the Palestinian Art Court—al-Hoash, with support from the A. M. Qattan Foundation.

Prior to the exhibit, the project produced a research paper on the history of metalwork and jewelry making in Palestine.2 Archaeological discoveries have uncovered tools and ornaments made of gold, silver, and bronze at a number of Palestinian sites. According to the paper, these findings attest to an early development in the techniques of smelting, casting, hammering, and decorating metals. This reflects the status of metalcraft within the economic and cultural fabric of local communities.

The paper addressed many themes and, according to Palestinian jewelry designer and That Jewelry Studio cofounder Rawan Bazbazat, opened up previously unexplored worlds for her. Her perspective as a jewelry designer changed after learning about the historical role of women in adornment making and the significance of different pieces.

“I didn’t know that the shatwa worn on a woman’s head indicated her social standing, identified her father, and reflected her savings. I also did not know that the veils covering women’s faces in some regions of Palestine were symbols indicating the tribe from which the woman descended.”3

Speaking to Jerusalem Story, Rawan said her work typically focuses on folk symbols connected to protection and memory. She carefully deconstructs and reassembles them into works with conceptual and material dimensions. This practice, she explains, was reinforced after working on the research paper for this project.

With these words as our starting point, we set off on a tour of the exhibition, which featured five female artists (Rawan Bazbazat, Tala Sandouka, Nawal Amer, Nour Qaimari, and Jessica Azizeh), in addition to artist Mohammad Ammous. All six are Jerusalemites. What caught our attention was not only the works mounted or hanging on the walls but also the names given to the pieces and the variety of raw materials used to produce them.

We returned to Rawan’s artwork Eye on the Eye, which reinterprets the eye symbol as a protective amulet, by deconstructing its connotations and recasting it beyond its traditional function. She said the piece was executed using a copper-hammering technique, in which the eye takes shape through the contrast between raised and recessed surfaces, across multiple attempts to reconstruct the form and test it visually and materially.

“The eye appears in the work as a familiar form, but it is metallic—it neither sees nor protects. It mimics the amulet without carrying its religious or personal function. I love amulets, even though today they are viewed as contrary to religious doctrine. They offer a sense of security; a person who wears an eye or a palm feels protected by God, and they are aware of that.”

The eye in her work does not see, because the amulet has lost its function today, as people have become more concerned with material forms of protection. Safety has become tied to income and savings rather than home, family, and health. The work contains many eyes, but none of them protect, according to Rawan.

Her other piece, Memory Bowls, consists of five glass bowls connected by a set of long chain mail links. These recall the tasat al-ra‘ba—the bowl of fright—that women once used to dispel intense fear and anxiety.

In the past, Quranic verses, prayers, or certain symbols were inscribed or recited over these bowls after filling them with water, which was then drunk or used for washing. “Because this culture has grown fragile today, I wanted to revive it through a piece of artwork,” she said.

Rawan made a point of wearing a necklace decorated with amulets shaped like the kaff (the palm) found in Palestinian cultural heritage. All the participating artists wore jewelry connected to this tradition.

Jerusalem Story was drawn to Security from Illusion, a piece by Jerusalem-born artist Tala Sandouka, who uses straw as the primary medium in her installation work (see Tala Sandouka: A Jerusalem Artist Weaving Memory from Straw). A distinct scent of cloves emerged from the piece, combined with traditional protective elements. Tala explained that the work, which consists of a garment woven from straw, raises fundamental questions about traditional and contemporary notions of safety.

When asked about the significance of the embedded traditional elements, Tala said she had inlaid them with cloves; the strong scent was once believed to repel evil spirits. Therefore, women often placed them in children’s clothing or hats. The blue bead was thought to “cool the eye of the envious.” Shells offered protection. Certain stones were believed to attract health and wealth, and a turtle shell was a symbol for a long life.

Tala revealed that the piece placed her in a state of personal challenge. Her installation work had always been tied to producing furniture or upcycling old materials using straw, whereas here for the first time, she used it in a way that comes into contact with the body.

In the next room, the walls were adorned with colored and transparent glass in a work titled Sustaining Heritage by artist Nawal Amer (see Nawal Amer: A Jerusalemite Artist Who Gives Life to Glass). Nawal told Jerusalem Story that the piece is rooted in a rereading of traditional Palestinian jewelry, particularly glass bead elements that were used not only for adornment but also carried symbolic meanings tied to folk beliefs such as protection, luck, and warding off envy.

“The work reappropriates the concept of the bead in a contemporary form, where each piece carries a meaning or feeling that is still relevant to people today, like balance, energy, psychological protection, memory, and identity.”4

The work uses glass as its primary material and offers a visual language that preserves the spirit of heritage while recasting it in a new form.

“This is my first contribution to the field of Palestinian jewelry and adornments, and it has been an exceptional experience through which I documented many symbols, beliefs, and personal concepts. I linked them all together with a red thread, referencing the way Palestinian women once gathered the elements of their handmade jewelry.”

We noted that the artist wore a red embroidered Palestinian shawl and a collection of heritage jewelry pieces crafted in an earlier era, belonging to the collection of Jerusalemite Hidaya al-Husseini, adopted daughter of Hind al Husseini (see Hind al-Husseini).

On the walls of the same room were five pencil drawings by artist Mohammad Ammous, titled From Crafting Jewelry to Crafting Meaning. The drawings depict the hands of the craftswomen (the five artists) at work for the exhibition.

The work traces the relationship between the artisan and her material, and the shift from her position as guardian of heritage to a creator who reshapes material and meaning through her own vision. It brings together five artisans working across jewelry design, glass, ceramics, and straw weaving, each drawing inspiration from their grandmothers’ possessions, domestic memory, and inherited traditional forms.

In a third room hung the copper and silver work Crafting a Dream, by Jerusalemite jewelry designer Nour Qaimari. The work is composed of seven symbols of interconnected dreams, inspired by the words of artist Amer Hlehel in the song “I Dreamed of You Last Night,” where the dream appears as a space in which the absent is temporarily made whole before dissolving upon awakening.

This feeling, Nour told Jerusalem Story, resonates with her experience in research: “Whenever I drew closer to an old photograph, a piece, or account, it seemed as though a part of Palestinian women’s history came back to life for a moment, only to retreat again into the slivers of memory. The dream became the visual and conceptual frame for the work and a way to engage with absence as part of history itself.”5

On the symbolism of her seven dream representations that hang at the bottom of the piece, Nour said the fish represents abundance, life, and continuity, while the bird points to freedom and the desire to transcend physical boundaries. The eye relates to protection, observation, and the capacity to preserve what is on the verge of disappearing. The serpent appears as a dual symbol, combining fear with transformation and renewal. The lizard speaks to survival and the ability to adapt to harsh environments. The silkworm, inspired by its presence in traditional Palestinian jewelry, symbolizes transformation, patience, and continuity. Through its historical ties to silk production and cultural exchange routes, it emerges as a symbol of both fragility and strength, a small creature carrying within it long stories of labor, memory, and movement through time.

We asked Nour whether her perspective on her artwork had been changed through her work on her project for the My Grandmother and Her Adornments exhibit. “Yes, definitely,” she replied. “Before, I believed an artist could draw inspiration from anything in nature and the life around them. But after researching what our Palestinian heritage holds, specifically in the field of jewelry, I felt I had fallen short and had a responsibility to carry the heritage forward. I shouldn’t be drawing inspiration from just anywhere; I need to continue from where previous generations left off, transmit it, and ensure its continuity.”

Moving on, we came to Blessings from Palestine, a series of ceramic works through which Palestinian Jerusalemite designer, artist, and researcher Jessica Azizeh evokes Palestinian jewelry as material archives carrying people’s culture, identity, and values.

Jessica views Palestinian jewelry as historically playing a role beyond adornment: It reflects legacy and embodies and transmits people’s beliefs, values, and collective memory. It also accompanied women through the rhythms of their daily lives: grinding wheat, picking citrus, pressing olives, celebrating weddings, and more.

In her exhibited works, Jessica used ceramics shaped as fish, which have long been present in Palestinian heritage, alongside chain mail links.

In the same hall, one wall displayed an exhibit titled Jewelry and Its People. The exhibit was a visual journey narrating the story of women and their adornments across time. It included 12 archival photographs of Palestinian women from the 1920s through the 1940s wearing jewelry. The photos show how adornments accompanied women through their lives and gave them meaning, while also taking on meaning from the women who wore them and helping to shape their significance. A note beneath the exhibit’s description indicated that the photographs came from the collection of Yasser Barakat.

It was not easy to fully grasp the deep significance of the works in the My Grandmother and Her Adornments exhibit. Visitors may come away feeling the need to explore the history of Palestinian jewelry making and the evolution of traditional crafts for a deeper understanding, particularly given the lack of documentation and the absence of a comprehensive reference book on heritage jewelry, as Rawan indicated.

Rawan said this absence has created a great sense of importance to produce a series of writings on this significant aspect of Palestinian cultural heritage, which, she emphasizes, has been marginalized since the Colonial British Mandate period.

My Grandmother and Her Adornments will remain open at the Palestinian Art Court—Al Hoash in Jerusalem until July 10, 2026.