THE LAND OF GLASS

Athens Design Forum speaks with Palestinian designer Dima Srouji following the 2022 six-year retrospective of Hollow Forms and our presentation of Phoenician Pigeons in Brussels, Belgium. Papanikolopoulos and Srouji uncover images and narratives of resistance enveloped by the praxis of craftsmanship – from shared meals with artisans in Jaba’ to the longevity and palimpsest ecosystem of glass production.

ON PLACE (Jaba’, a historic village between Jerusalem and Ramallah)

When I first moved back to Palestine in 2016, I was working with Riwaq – an NGO for architectural conservation – renovating one of the historic villages. In Jaba’, I met the Twam family who was running a glassblowing workshop on the roof of their home – it was at a time when their space felt like a construction site. The workshop was covered in glass beakers and chemistry lab equipment as they were making orders for the science department of Birzeit University. I was so impressed by their skills and we started collaborating on the spot with a design process they hadn’t experienced before. 

ON HISTORY (the intergenerational family artisanal workshops)

The craftsmen are all part of the Twam family: the younger kids cut the glass into appropriate sizes for the pieces we are working on, and the more experienced members of the family work the flame. Abu Marwan, the founder of the shop and the male head of the family, has almost forty years of experience and can produce work that is very complex and intricate. While he works on some of the more complicated pieces for Hollow Forms, the younger craftsmen watch him and discuss, sometimes debate, alternative methods of making the same artifact. 

ON TECHNOLOGY (an introduction)

3D software used in my architecture practice is also used here to communicate the design concepts to the craftsmen. 

ON PRINCIPLES (of architecture, of design)

Architecture principles and design principles share a lot but they are not the same. Architecture at its core provides space as shelter and space for life whereas design, at least in my process, is not interested in providing shelter in that foundational sense but rather can be a tool for framing stories and experiences. They infiltrate in that the process of execution is quite similar but their ultimate goals are different. 

ON MATERIALITY (the evolution of Hollow Forms)

The textures of the Phoenician Pigeons collection are quite unique. This is the first collection of Hollow Forms that experiments with texture beyond a tone and color combination. For example, the Almost Roman collection combined historically Roman tones with quite contemporary palettes such as honey in combination with lavender. With the Phoenician Pigeons collection on the other hand, we experimented with some of the material applications that were used historically in Palestine for decades. Some of the mineral compounds used include silver oxide combined with plant ash powder. This same texture was used by my mother for a collection of vessels she produced with the same glassblowers in Jaba’ 30 years ago as products that were given away during my parents’ wedding reception. The textures used in this collection were inspired by the wedding collection from 1989. 

ON WOMEN AND LAND (the labor of extraction)

Women were used as excavation labour by multiple archaeological institutions in the US and UK. They were known for their careful eyes and hands. Known as basket girls, they carried the rubble on their heads using baskets woven by them and other Palestinian women. Some of the fragments extracted from the ground include pieces of their own ancestry such as perfume bottles for different cleansing rituals and female figures of maternal goddesses.

ON THE CENTRAL TABLE (sharing of meals with artisans)

Im Marwan, Marwan’s mother, and Abu Marwan’s wife Maha cooks for us almost every time I go to the workshop. Palestinian hospitality is famous in the region. If a guest arrives to your home, you welcome them with food, coffee, and dessert in your home even if they are coming to the workshop for a quick visit. Im Marwan has cooked traditional meals for us multiple times such as mansaf and maqlubeh, two of my favorite meals. It’s a big plus for going to work. 

ABOUT HOLLOW FORMS

Hollow Forms [est. 2016]  is a glassblowing project in Palestine that aims to reveal the hidden history of the material in the region and shed light on the continuing skills of the craftsmen in Palestine. This is done in collaboration with the Twam family in Jaba’, a historic village between Jerusalem and Ramallah. The Twams have 40 years of experience with glass with three generations in the same family working in the shop in their home.

ABOUT DIMA SROUJI

Dima Srouji’s role as the designer is to work with experts to imagine new ways of experimentation and forming contemporary glass where the maker and designer push each other’s limits. Dima’s background is an architect, designer, artist, and educator working in the expanded context of interdisciplinary research-based projects using multiple mediums. In her work, Srouji looks for potential ruptures in the ground where imaginary liberation is possible. She also works with film, text, archives, maps, plaster casts, understanding each as an evocative object and emotional companion that help her question what cultural heritage and public space mean in the context of the Middle East. Glass for her is a lens onto a bigger umbrella of how archaeological sites and artifacts in Palestine are weaponized for further occupation and colonization of our people from their homes. Srouji was the Jameel Fellow at the Victoria & Albert Museum and is leading the MA City Design studio at the Royal College of Art in London. She is based between London and Palestine.

Images courtesy Dima Srouji / Hollow Forms

<View our 2022 collaboration, presenting Phoenician Pigeions and a six-year retrospective of Srouji’s Hollow Forms at Collectible Fair>