A small Israeli design studio revamp Jewish memorabilia market
Established in 2010, Piece of History is proud to be Israels first design studio focused on creating contemporary history-oriented, collectibles, prints, t-shirts and more.
The studio is based in Tel-Aviv, Israel, and employ a crew of passionate designers motivated by their love of history and art. The main purpose of the studio is to create modern (and cool) gifts, collectibles and souvenirs which will be an alternative to the archaic Judaica products.
The idea first came up 6 years ago, while Asaf Harari, the studio's founder, was a student in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It is in Jerusalem that it first occurred to him that the Israeli souvenir market needs to be thoroughly revamped, and that theres room for more updated souvenirs besides archaic Judaica products that flooding Israel's streets for decades. "My love of design (specially for pop-art, vinyl figures etc.) together with my love of Israel led me to start designing souvenirs with a more contemporary feel". Hence, the flagship product of the studio is the Zion's Action FIgures series, depicting the figurines of Moshe Dayan, David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Menachem Begin and Theodor Herzl.
"In the United States, every gift shop sells figurines of movie stars, cartoon characters, athletes and politicians such as President Obama. The whole culture of action figures and vinyl figures (such as Kid Robot) is part of United States art folklore and the country's identity" Asaf says. "I thought that the time has come for Israel to develop its own action figures culture. I believe that souvenirs and collectibles are part of the any country's showcase (not only for tourists, especially for internal self image) and identity, and I wanted to affect it in a positive way - bringing modern style to the historic culture of Israel, Judaism and Zionism."
Piece of History items are selling in several stores in Israel, located mostly in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv. Per to Asaf, the main target audience is in the United States and Canada, which they sell to through the studio ecommerce website.
These days the studio is working on the designs of Ze'ev Jabotinsky and Chaim Weizmann, and constantly working on new prints and T-shirts designs.
As for the responds, "besides anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli comments that we are getting through the social media, the overall respond from the Jewish community is very enthusiastic. It's like people really waited for something like this to happen, we are keep hearing people saying how come no one ever thought about it before. People here are finally having something to bring to their family when they come visiting them abroad".