David Ohannessian Room
At Le Macassar we are privileged to have a large sixteen panel installation by famed Armenian ceramicist, David Ohannessian. He had a fascinating life and his story is told in the book Feast of Ashes by Sato Moughalian.
David Ohannessian (1884–1953), established an Iznik pottery in Kütahya, Ottoman Empire, in 1907, and quickly gained renown for his tile renovations of historic monuments. He worked in cooperation with Kütahya's two other workshops of that era, those owned by Mehmet Emin and by the Minassian brothers. He obtained international commissions and in 1911 Ohannessian was commissioned with designing and executing Kütahya tile revetments for the estate of Lord Mark Sykes.
In late 1915, during the Armenian genocide, Ohannessian was arrested and imprisoned in Kütahya by the Ottoman Turks; like many other Armenian notables, he was falsely accused of engaging in revolutionary activities. In early 1916, he and his family were deported from Kütahya and they survived in a refugee camp in Aleppo for nearly two years. Seemingly by a twist of fate, Lord Sykes found them and suggested that Ohannessian and the other Armenian ceramicists might be able to replicate the broken and missing tiles on the Dome of the Rock, a building then in a decayed and neglected condition. They therefore moved to Jerusalem and set up business in the Armenian quarter. Although the commission for the Dome of the Rock was cut short in 1922, the Ohannessian pottery in Jerusalem succeeded and he sold commissions internationally.
Ohannessian's tiles decorate many of Jerusalem's most notable buildings, including the Rockefeller Museum, the Mardigian Museum of Armenian Art and Culture and the American Colony Hotel.
In 1925, Ohannessian attended the Art Deco exposition in Paris where he met the owners of the Le Macassar, Mdme. and M. Blotiere. They commissioned the sixteen beautiful panels that were then crafted in his Jerusalem workshop, and carefully shipped to France, where they can be enjoyed today.