Obj. ID: 35652
Sacred and Ritual Objects  Besomim, Warsaw, 1865

The following description was prepared by William Gross:

In Jewish tradition the end of the Sabbath and other Jewish Holidays is marked by the ceremony of Havdalah (Separation) that differentiates between the Holy nature of the holdiay and the profane nature of the following day. This ritual is accomplished by lighting a special candle with several wicks, drinking wine from a cup and the inhalation of the sweet smell of spices. In the Ashkenazi world these spices were usually held in a container which was often shaped in varying forms.

Jewish silversmiths began to appear in Warsaw, with their own marks, around the middle of the 19th century. Abraham Reiner was one of the first. His silver mark is a running stag in an oval. He appears to have been the initiator of this early model of what is currently labeled a square "spool type" tower, a form which was eventually made and distributed widely towards the end of the 19th century by the Warsaw silversmith Kharlap. There exist in collections a number of different types of ritual objects from the hand of this master. The form was copied by a number of silversmiths in Warsaw and later utilized by Polish immigrant silversmiths to England using English hallmarks.