Saturated with richness and abundance of heritage, Lebanon offers the country’s capital city of art and talent worthy of its lost multiculturality. Talented artisans around the nation leave life behind in carrying on millennia-long tradition on the loom of legendary Cedars of Lebanon. Legates of centuries of art, they work to the utmost of their capabilities in skills and craftsmanship passed down generation by generation so that their ancestors’ voices continue to echo in society today.
The country boasts of a refined range of handicrafts in their original form such as woodcarving, ceramics, weaving, and jewelry. In a town, say Tripoli, employees toil day and night at workshop factories making very fine pieces of ceramics with the objective of tracing Lebanese history once again. Century-old methods are applied on local clays and glazes that have been handed centuries ago. This enthusiasm for conventional arts not only can make form gorgeous but leads to individuals and groups possessing a higher degree of self. Weaving is a conventional art that assumes a twin meaning in the handicraft culture of Lebanon too.
She weaves exquisite fabrics on handlooms, clothes which draw energetic themes and motifs from nature and folk with Beqaa Valley. Her products, which she creates using natural colors and local materials, are environmentally friendly because “consumers have demanded more products with a sustainable nature.” She offers them to Lebanese homes and to the global market, and thus is able to propagate her heritage to the world. Jewelry crafting is also gaining popularity among Lebanon’s designers and jewelers replicating historic techniques utilized when Phoenician was the prevailing power. They are businesspeople who trade the precious stones and metals directly from the country.
Because of their interest in art and peculiarity, i.e., what they want from their customers, it also promotes patronage of home industry. They distribute their own products in the country and in home craft shops, and they promote the use of handmade jewelry and the fact that each of them has a history. And of course, there is Lebanese woodworking in which woodworkers shave other neighborhood cedar trimmings and other hardwoods and furniture pieces with hand tools of their own. He is satisfied in his head that he makes good and useful things.
His existence as a wood craftsman is all about blending past and current style, something better than what the modern world can offer but still close and within reach. Everything that they do resonates in the history of the nation, and all therefore in great demand among the locals as well as the foreigners. Despite all that has been done unto them, from globalization and overall need for mass production of merchandise to the fall of their enterprise, Lebanese women and men artisans continue to persevere at their trade. They yearn to remember youthfulness through workshops and exhibitions towards the advancement of traditional arts. By this consciousness of heritage, these craftsmen not only survive in their profession but also battle for the betterment of pride instead of cultural heritage. Lebanon’s mountain rustling cedars recall the nation to their multicolored past and their sponsors who are backing the nation. Their question and their quest are so magnificent that they assure their grandfathers’ stories will never be forgotten in the capacity to be amazed by future generations, weaving the nation’s heritage in the current.
