One thread, every collection
Tatreez & Craft
Embroidery, soap, glass, olive wood — the craft economy and its makers.
35 entries across 8 collections
Al-Majdal
Gaza · 1950
Al-Majdal (Majdal Asqalan) was a market town of some ten thousand people, famed for its weaving, on the coastal plain north of Gaza. Captured in November 1948, its remaining residents were held under military rule and finally expelled to Gaza in 1950; the town became the Israeli city of Ashkelon's Migdal quarter.
Tarshiha
Acre · 1948
Tarshiha was a large Muslim-Christian town of the upper Galilee, a tobacco-growing and craft center, bombed and captured in Operation Hiram in late October 1948. Most of its people fled or were driven into Lebanon, but several hundred remained or returned; its old core survives inside the merged city of Ma'alot-Tarshiha.
Bethlehem
Bethlehem Governorate, West Bank
Bethlehem — Beit Lahm — carries a double weight: the birthplace of Jesus beneath the sixth-century Church of the Nativity, and a town pressed between settlements and the separation wall that now seals it off from Jerusalem, five miles away.
Hebron
Hebron Governorate, southern West Bank
Hebron — al-Khalil, the city of Abraham — is one of the oldest living cities in the world, built around the Ibrahimi Mosque over the Cave of the Patriarchs, famed for its glass and its hospitality, and divided since 1997 into the sharpest microcosm of the occupation.
Nablus
Nablus Governorate, northern West Bank
Nablus — Roman Flavia Neapolis, nestled between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal — is the northern West Bank's proud commercial heart, famed for its Old City, its olive-oil soap and its knafeh, and shadowed by Balata, the West Bank's most populous refugee camp.
Armenian Ceramics of Jerusalem
craft
A craft born from two catastrophes: Armenian genocide survivors brought to Jerusalem in 1919 to retile the Dome of the Rock, whose workshops became a Palestinian tradition.
Bethlehem Mother-of-Pearl
craft
Nacre carved into crosses, rosaries, and models of the Church of the Nativity — a Bethlehem trade at least four centuries old, and for much of it a women's trade.
Hebron Glass
craft
The hand-blown glass of Hebron — blue, green, and amber vessels shaped for centuries in family factories beside the old city.
Nabulsi Soap
craft
Ivory cubes of olive oil soap stacked in drying towers — an industry that made Nablus the soap capital of the Levant, and that has been dismantled by earthquake, border, and occupation.
Palestinian Pottery
craft
Red clay thrown on a hand wheel in Gaza and Hebron — cooking pots, water jars, and plant vessels made by families whose surname is simply 'the potter'.
Tatreez
craft
Palestinian cross-stitch embroidery, inscribed by UNESCO in 2021, encoding village, region, and memory in thread.
The Blue Thread of Beersheba
craft
In the Beersheba district the colour of the thread stated a woman's marital status: blue for the unmarried and the widowed, red and pink added when she married again.
The Embroidery Cooperatives
craft
The societies — In'ash al-Usra in al-Bireh, In'aash al-Mukhayyam in Beirut — that turned tatreez from a village skill into paid work, and in doing so kept it being taught.
The Hirbawi Loom
craft
A weaving shed in Hebron, opened in 1961, that is the last place in Palestine where the Palestinian keffiyeh is still made.
The Qabbeh
craft
The embroidered square at the chest of a Palestinian dress — worked separately, moved from dress to dress, and the single clearest statement of which district a woman came from.
The Shatweh
craft
The tall coin-covered cap of Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour and Lifta — worn by married women, and carrying the coins of her own dowry on her head.
The Smadeh
craft
The Ramallah coin cap — a padded ring packed with silver, worn under the veil, and a woman's own cash reserve carried on her head.
The Thobe
craft
The Palestinian dress and its regional grammar — the chest panel, the coin headdress of Ramallah, the gold-couched malak of Bethlehem — and what happened to that geography after 1948.
Thob al-Intifada
craft
The Intifada dress: when the Palestinian flag could not be flown, women cross-stitched it — with the map, the word Palestine, and the letters PLO — onto the dresses they wore in the street.
Darzah
Tatreez fashion from the West Bank · Zababdeh & the West Bank
A nonprofit social-enterprise brand: tatreez and tahriri embroidered fashion and accessories, 100% handmade by women artisans in the West Bank.
Listed onMakers — this collection has no page per entry.
Handmade Palestine
Fair-trade marketplace · Ships from USA
A fair-trade marketplace for Palestinian-made tatreez, olive wood, jewelry, olive oil, and Nabulsi soap — with training, grants, and materials for women artisans.
Listed onMakers — this collection has no page per entry.
Hirbawi
The last keffiyeh factory in Palestine · Hebron, West Bank
Keffiyehs still woven on the original looms of the Hirbawi factory in Hebron — the last keffiyeh factory in Palestine. This is its official North America store.
Listed onMakers — this collection has no page per entry.
Inaash Association
Embroidery by the women of the camps · Beirut, Lebanon
Founded in 1969, Inaash produces traditional Palestinian hand embroidery with refugee women in Lebanon's camps — 350+ women working today, 9,000+ supported since inception.
Listed onMakers — this collection has no page per entry.
Palestinian Elegance
Modest fashion, crafted with heritage · Texas, USA · Palestinian-owned
A Palestinian-owned modest fashion house: thobes, abayas, keffiyehs, and jewelry built around hand-finished tatreez embroidery — heritage made to be worn.
Listed onMakers — this collection has no page per entry.
Palestinian Soap Cooperative
Nablus olive-oil soap, cooperatively · Nablus, West Bank
A cooperative importing traditional olive-oil soap from Nablus's remaining family soap factories — Shaka'a, Canaan, Tbeleh, Tuqan — with profit-sharing across the industry.
Listed onMakers — this collection has no page per entry.
Sunbula
Fair trade from 25 artisan groups · Jerusalem
A Jerusalem fair-trade nonprofit selling embroidery, basketry, and olive-wood crafts from artisan groups across Palestine — over $2.4M paid to artisans since 2010.
Listed onMakers — this collection has no page per entry.
Tatreez & Tea
The Tatreez Institute · Diaspora · est. 2016
Wafa Ghnaim's Palestinian embroidery and dress-history institute — tutorials, classes, research, and a study collection of rematriated thobes.
Listed onMakers — this collection has no page per entry.
The Nablus Soap Company
The classic Nabulsi bar · Nablus, West Bank
Handmade traditional Nabulsi olive-oil soap — the classic paper-wrapped bar and its honey, rose, and pomegranate variants.
Listed onMakers — this collection has no page per entry.
Turquoise Mountain — Palestine
Reviving heritage crafts · Palestine programme
A heritage charity founded in 2006 working with artisan communities in Palestine and the wider Levant to revive and sustain traditional crafts.
Listed onMakers — this collection has no page per entry.
Women in Hebron
A women's embroidery cooperative · Hebron, West Bank
A women's cooperative producing traditional Palestinian embroidery and handicrafts to economically empower women and their families in the Hebron area.
Listed onMakers — this collection has no page per entry.
Gaza, by Name
The district before the Strip
Before Gaza was a strip it was a district: grain villages, a weaving town, orchards along the coast road. This walk names the places that were emptied into it, and the camps their people built on top of themselves.
What a People Made
Thread, soap, glass, bread, story, step
Two Palestinian practices sit on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity; neither of them needed the certificate. A walk through the things Palestinians make, and the people who kept the record of how.
Where this thread crosses others
Counted on records the two threads actually share, not on words they have in common.
A thread is a reading order, not a boundary — every record above belongs to other threads too.