אוסף חוה יופה

Chava Weiller Yoffe was born on August 12, 1925 in San Francisco, California, with the name Evelyn Virginia. Her parents were Alfred and Adeline Weiller. Her grandfather came to America around 1830 from the Alsace Lorraine region and settled in California. Alfred Weiller, the father, was a lawyer. He represented the German Embassy in the United States until the 1930's at which point he refused to represent them any longer. Adeline, the mother, died when Chava was 10 years old (1935). Alfred remarried a woman of Scottish descent who was friendly with a group of Chinese and Japanese. Chava's friends were Catholics and the help was Mexican. There was a cosmopolitan atmosphere in the house in which she grew up. Chava attended high school in San Francisco. She acquired her Jewish studies in "Sunday School". In her first year at the University of California in Berkley she studied mathematics, but then changed her major to anthropology and art. At the same time she studied drawing with a Japanese artist. Upon completion of her studies, around 1949, she worked in the Children's Wing of the San Francisco Museum. Chava married David Hede and they moved to Israel in 1950. She had a part time job in the Antiquities Department sketching and drawing. As part of her work, she took a cours ein preservation and renovation that focused on mosaics and murals. The artists Dudu Shenhav, Naomi Henrik and David Palombo, studied with her. After one year she travelled to Verona, Italy and studied the art of mosaics at the Academia de Bella Art in 1955-1956. She returned to Israel after completing the course, divorced her husband and settled in Jerusalem where she began making mosaics for private buyers. During the first few years after her return, she had to work in other jobs as well to support herself. In 1958 Chava married Shimon Yoffe, a South African native who moved to Israel in 1952. He worked as a clerk at the Hebrew University. Chava taught Shimon the art of preservation and he helped her with her work, however he also created as an artist in his own right. They lived on #27 Hanevi'im Street in Jerusalem and had two children: Adi and Oron. Around 1961 Chava received her first major commission- a mosaic wall on the Givat Ram Campus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Shimon spoke about the work, "We broke the stones for her. It's not easy to prepare full boxes of stones, each exactly 1cm. I would mix cement for her. Sometimes I would do the easy parts of the work". In 1968 Chava began creating mosaics for the Armenian Patriarch in the areas of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem that are under the control of the Armenians. This project, under the direction of Bishop Georod Kapikian, lasted 20 years. Afterwards she worked at the Rockefeller Museum for 10 years, in the area of conservation and reconstruction of ancient mosaics. Chava worked in the department of antiquities and museums and in the 1980's she was appointed Director of Conservation. She participated in a training course on mosaic conservation given by UNESCO. From 2000-2001 Chava and Shimon worked together at the Herodion. They removed mosaics in order to repair them and return them to the site. Chava's works are displayed at the Ben Gurion Airport, the President's residence and in private homes. Chava passed away in Jerusalem on April 23, 2002. The family home was sold to investors and later destroyed. Shimon Yoffe lives in Carmiel today. Shimon Yoffe gave these pictures to the archives at Yad Ben-Zvi. The album gives us a glimpse into to works of Chava Yoffe, her mosaics and the conservation and repairs of old works, as well as personal pictures. Extensive research on Chava Yoffe and her colleagues, the Jerusalem mosaic artists, is taking place in the Department of Visual History, Curators and Documentation, at Yad Ben-Zvi, and will be published soon. اقرأ أكثر