The Story of the Orange Blossom

Before the pivotal year of 1948, Jaffa was a bustling Arab city with a thriving economy and cultural scene, with well-known markets, cafes, theatres, and cinemas. 

Jaffa had a major port and was considered one of the most important cities in the Mediterranean. Its surrounding villages produced large quantities of citrus, which helped develop the city into a hub for trade. 

In the era preceeding 1948, many Palestinian families in the Jaffa area were involved with either owning, managing, or harvesting orange groves. In some years leading up to 1939, as many as 300,000 dunums were cultivated with citrus and 15 million boxes of oranges were exported.

The most famous garments of the area were from Beit Dajan, a Palestinian village depopulated by Isreal in 1948, situated approximately 6 km from Jaffa. The village was renowned for producing dresses featuring rich embroidery on the chest, sleeves, and sides.

Orange blossoms embroidered on the top part of a chest panel from Beit Dajan as seen in the book 'Palestinian Embroidery: Traditional Fallahi Cross-Stitch" by Widad Kawar and Tania Nasser.

Like most embroidery from Palestine, the orange blossom pattern was made using the cross-stitch technique, in which X-shaped stitches in a tiled, raster-like pattern form an image.

Palestinian women and girls continued to learn the cross-stitch and the unique patterns from each area after becoming refugees in neighbouring Arab countries.

Woman working at a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) embroidery workshop in Amman.