GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — In his shop in the middle of the Old City market in Jerusalem, Hagop Antreassian sits among an array of colorful ceramic pottery and tiles, a craft that has been practiced by Armenians for 100 years in Jerusalem.

Antreassian, 73, is Armenian-Palestinian and lives in the Armenian Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem. For 40 years, he has taken great pride in the craft he taught himself, although he fears that the ceramics and tile-making, the mark of the Armenian presence in Jerusalem, may now be disappearing.

Antreassian explains that his family, came from Zeitoun in Turkey’s Marash province to escape the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian genocide during World War I. Now, in southwest Jerusalem's Armenian Quarter, their descendants coexist with Palestinians in the holy city. During the British mandate in 1920, three renowned Armenian families — the Balians, Karakashians and Ohannesians — were recruited to repair the tiles on the Dome of the Rock, a shrine that dates back to the seventh century. Ever since, the Armenian families that settled in Jerusalem have continued the crafts that first made them famous back in the Ottoman Empire, not only as a source of livelihood but as preservation of heritage.

Antreassian told Al-Monitor in a phone call from his Jerusalem residence that he is determined to revive the art form, though the residents of Jerusalem and larger Palestinian cities such as Al-Bireh and Bethlehem do not seem very interested in ceramics. Fortunately, the tourists who come to the Old Market and the Armenian Quarter flock to the tile shops that are part of the historical heritage in this part of town, which includes a closed Armenian monastery and several ancient churches.