The 9 Best Design and Craft Studios in Israel (2026)

Updated August 2026 · 9 picks

The best design and craft studios in Israel are the Safed artists' quarter, where glassblowing, candle-making and Kabbalistic painting all happen in working studios, and Tel Aviv's design shops and Jaffa flea market collectives. Nahalat Binyamin's twice-weekly fair is the single best place to buy directly from makers. Nine, below.

1. Nahalat Binyamin Arts and Crafts Fair — Nahalat Binyamin, Tel Aviv

Several hundred makers selling their own work, twice a week, on a closed street.

₪₪ Mid-range

The Nahalat Binyamin fair takes over the pedestrianised street beside the Carmel Market every Tuesday and Friday, with hundreds of stalls of handmade jewellery, ceramics, glass, textiles, wooden toys and art.

The critical rule is that sellers must have made what they sell, and it is enforced. That single condition is what separates this from every other craft market aimed at visitors, and it means you can ask the person in front of you how the thing was made.

Street performers work the length of the street. Friday is busier and finishes earlier; Tuesday is calmer and better for actually talking to makers.

Good to know: Tuesday is the better day if you want to browse properly — Friday is packed and ends by mid-afternoon.

Google Maps Website

2. Sheva Chaya Glassblowing — Artists' Quarter, Safed

A working glassblowing studio with live demonstrations and Kabbalah-inspired work.

₪₪₪ Upmarket

Sheva Chaya's studio in the artists' quarter is a working glassblowing operation where the artist demonstrates at the furnace and explains the Kabbalistic ideas the work draws on.

Watching glass being blown is compelling regardless of the philosophy attached, and the combination of live craft and explanation makes this the most engaging studio visit in Safed.

Demonstrations run at set times; check before arriving.

Good to know: Check the demonstration times before you go — watching the glassblowing is the whole point.

Google Maps Website

3. The Artists' Quarter — Southern old city, Safed

Not one studio but a whole quarter of them, in the old Arab town.

₪₪ Mid-range

The artists' quarter occupies the old Arab neighbourhood on the southern side of Safed's old city, established as an artists' colony in the 1950s and continuously worked since.

Dozens of studios and galleries open off the stone lanes, most of them one-person operations where the artist is at work in the back, and the general printers' gallery in the old mosque building acts as a hub.

Wandering is the method. Half the studios you walk into will be shut and the other half will be the reason you came.

Good to know: Go mid-week — on Friday half the quarter is already closing for Shabbat.

Google Maps Website

4. Studio Armadillo — Tel Aviv

A design duo making contemporary Judaica and objects that are genuinely well made.

₪₪₪ Upmarket

Studio Armadillo is the practice of designers Hadas Kruk and Arnon Gonen, working across product design, contemporary Judaica and objects that sit somewhere between craft and industrial design.

Their work has been shown and collected internationally, and it is a useful corrective to the assumption that Israeli Judaica means silver filigree — these are contemporary designed objects that happen to be ritual ones.

This is the right place to buy something that will still look considered in twenty years.

Good to know: The best answer in the city to 'I want Judaica that isn't traditional'.

Google Maps Website

5. Assufa — Jaffa Flea Market, Tel Aviv

A design store in the flea market built on the work of emerging Israeli designers.

₪₪₪ Upmarket

Assufa sits in the Jaffa flea market and is built around the work of young and emerging Israeli designers — furniture, lighting, objects and homeware from people early in their careers.

That focus makes it one of the more interesting shops in the city for anyone who wants to buy something before the designer becomes established, and the prices reflect the stage rather than the quality.

It sits among the antique dealers, which makes for an unusually good afternoon — twentieth-century junk on one side of the lane and next year's designers on the other.

Good to know: Combine with the flea market itself — old and new within the same few lanes.

Google Maps Website

6. Tzfat Gallery of Mystical Art — Artists' Quarter, Safed

Avraham Loewenthal's gallery, where the Kabbalah is explained as well as painted.

₪₪₪ Upmarket

The Tzfat Gallery of Mystical Art is Avraham Loewenthal's studio in the artists' quarter, showing paintings built explicitly on Kabbalistic concepts.

What distinguishes it is the explanation: the artist talks visitors through the ideas behind the work, which turns a gallery visit into something closer to a short class on Jewish mysticism.

It is a small space and the conversation is the reason to go in.

Good to know: Go in expecting to talk rather than just look — that is what this gallery is for.

Google Maps Website

7. Safed Candles — Old City, near the synagogues, Safed

Hand-dipped braided candles and enormous wax sculptures.

₪₪ Mid-range

Safed Candles is a workshop and shop in the old city producing hand-dipped candles, including the braided havdalah candles the town is known for, alongside large and elaborate wax sculptures.

The sculptures — biblical scenes worked in coloured wax, some of them substantial — are the thing people remember, and the workshop is usually visible from the shop.

Candles are among the better souvenirs from Safed: light, inexpensive and genuinely local.

Good to know: The braided havdalah candles are the classic buy — small, cheap and they survive a suitcase.

Google Maps Website

8. Jaffa Flea Market design studios — Old Jaffa, Tel Aviv

A cluster of independent studios and collectives among the antique dealers.

₪₪₪ Upmarket

The lanes of the Shuk HaPishpeshim below Old Jaffa's clock tower now hold a genuine concentration of design studios, ceramicists, jewellers and collectives, sitting among the antique and second-hand dealers who have been there for decades.

It is the closest thing Tel Aviv has to a design district, and the mix is what makes it work — you can buy a 1960s lamp and a piece made last week within thirty metres.

Many of the smaller studios keep irregular hours or open by appointment, so wander rather than planning a specific target.

Good to know: Go in the afternoon and stay for dinner — the same lanes turn into a bar quarter after dark.

Google Maps Website

9. Maskit — Tel Aviv

The heritage house that exists to keep Israeli craft traditions working.

₪₪₪₪ Splurge

Maskit was founded in 1954 by Ruth Dayan explicitly as a craft project — giving immigrant artisans from Yemen, North Africa and elsewhere paid work and keeping their embroidery and needlework traditions alive — and it became Israel's first fashion house in the process.

The revived label still builds its collections on hand embroidery and traditional technique, which puts it as much in the craft category as the fashion one.

It is expensive and it is meant to be: these are pieces made slowly by hand.

Good to know: Worth going in even if you are not buying — the embroidery work is museum-standard.

Google Maps Website

Frequently asked questions

Where is the best place to buy Israeli craft?

Directly from the maker, which in practice means the Safed artists' quarter, the Jaffa flea market studios, and the Nahalat Binyamin fair in Tel Aviv on a Tuesday or Friday. Buying from a shop that sells other people's work is fine, but the studios are where the interesting pieces are.

What is Israel known for in craft and design?

Contemporary Judaica above all — Israeli designers have essentially reinvented the form, and the results range from serious silversmithing to genuinely funny objects. Beyond that: hand-blown glass in Safed, Armenian ceramics in Jerusalem, olive-wood work, and a strong contemporary jewellery scene in Tel Aviv.

When is the Nahalat Binyamin craft fair?

Tuesdays and Fridays, roughly 10am to 5pm on Tuesday and until mid-afternoon on Friday, on the pedestrianised Nahalat Binyamin street next to Shuk HaCarmel in Tel Aviv. Every stallholder must make what they sell, which is the rule that makes it worth going to.

Can you watch craftspeople working in Israel?

Yes, in several places. Sheva Chaya's studio in Safed runs live glassblowing demonstrations, the Safed candle workshop lets you watch the dipping, and Yad LaKashish in Jerusalem opens its workshops to visitors. The Jaffa and Safed studios generally welcome people watching if they are not in the way.

Is Israeli design expensive?

Handmade Israeli design is priced like handmade design anywhere — a piece of studio glass or a designed Judaica object is not a souvenir price. What is genuinely good value is buying at the fair or the studio rather than through a gallery, which removes a substantial margin.

Where do you find Israeli designers in Tel Aviv?

Around the Jaffa flea market, where a cluster of independent studios and collectives sit among the antique dealers, and in the design shops around Neve Tzedek and the Shenkin area. Assufa and Studio Armadillo are the reliable starting points for contemporary work.

1. Nahalat Binyamin Arts and Crafts Fair — Nahalat Binyamin, Tel Aviv

2. Sheva Chaya Glassblowing — Artists' Quarter, Safed

3. The Artists' Quarter — Southern old city, Safed

4. Studio Armadillo — Tel Aviv

5. Assufa — Jaffa Flea Market, Tel Aviv

6. Tzfat Gallery of Mystical Art — Artists' Quarter, Safed

7. Safed Candles — Old City, near the synagogues, Safed

8. Jaffa Flea Market design studios — Old Jaffa, Tel Aviv

9. Maskit — Tel Aviv

Frequently asked questions

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