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Shaped and painted by women artisans in Nisf Jubeil — a hidden village northwest of Nablus, tucked halfway up a hillside where the stone houses dissolve into the mountains. In Greek, the village's name once meant "half of the sun," because the mountains delay both sunrise and sunset.
In 2015, a ceramics workshop opened here, the first of its kind in the northern West Bank. The first women trained, then they trained the women who came after them — the knowledge moving hand to hand, not from a manual, not from a factory. Today four women work in this workshop: a widow, a divorcée, a single woman, a married mother. For all of them, it is their main source of income.
Each piece begins in Hebron, fired into bisque — raw, undecorated clay. It arrives at the Nisf Jubeil workshop pale and unfinished. The women paint it by hand, apply a layer of glaze, and the mug goes into the kiln for eight hours. The next day, they come back and lift it out.
"We preserve our heritage and our name through art. The people who receive our work outside Palestine — please share our story. Your voice matters. And right now, it is making a difference."
