Braman's Wanderings

Tonight I am re-posting something I wrote about nine years ago. It has been a long day recovering from a cold so nothing original tonight.

12/3/15 – Olive Wood Nativity Sets

A couple years ago I wrote a post about an Olive Wood Elephant that I bought during a trip to Israel. The post has received a lot of views since then, but not because of the elephant.

In the post I also talked about the history of olive wood carving in Bethlehem and shared a picture of a large olive wood nativity set.

Here is the picture from the previous post. I have been thinking about this post today because I have an aunt who collects nativity sets and it is her birthday tomorrow. So, this post is inspired by her.

Here is some of the detail from this nativity set. Here we have the Three Wise Men. Click on the this link, Three Wise Men? to learn more about the wise men.

Here we have Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus in a manger.

I will add here a quote from my post about the Olive Wood Elephant:

Olive wood carving was introduced to the Bethlehem region back in the 4th century when they were ruled by the Byzantines. The local inhabitants were taught how to carve olive wood by monks from the Greek Orthodox church. Carving of olive wood became an occupation that was handed down from generation to generation and many of the carvers from today are descended from those who first learned almost 1700 years ago. Since they are in Bethlehem, many of the items are of a religious nature. All types of items from crosses, candle stick holders, book covers and nativity scenes are available. They have several different grades of carving based on the intricacy of the carving and the quality of the wood. The high grade pieces can sell for very large amounts of money.

Here is an even larger nativity set carved from olive wood. The large figures in this set come up to my waist and are very detailed.

Here we have the three kings again. Look at how detailed they are. Can you imagine how much work was put into the carving?

Here we have a closer view of the Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus. There is one thing that I don’t like about this set, and that is that the size of the animals are way out of proportion to the people.

I don’t remember the prices of these two sets, but I do remember that they were very expensive. Definitely in the thousands of dollars. They did have much smaller sets which had a wide range of prices depending on the quality of the wood and the intricacy of the carving.

These sets were all in the Kando Store in Bethlehem. The Kando Store is run by the family of the cobbler who bought the first Dead Sea Scrolls found at the Qumran Caves by Bedouin shepherds.

Steven