Obj. ID: 36254
Sacred and Ritual Objects Book Binding, Lemberg, circa 1800
The following description was prepared by William Gross:
The bindings of Jewish books are generally quite simple, but there does exist a tradition, probably among the wealthier section of the population, of binding books in special and elegant ways utilizing a variety of material.
Silver book bindings are one of the most elegant objects of Jewish ritual art. The form is generally copied from Catholic and Orthodox Christian tradition where prayer books were often covered with silver bindings in keeping with the other elegant silver pieces used in the prayer service. As in many other areas of life, Jews emulated some customs from what they saw of their Christian neighbors. Since such a binding was an expensive purchase for an individual, such silver pieces are fairly rare. Their appearance is most widespread in Italy, but examples also exist from Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Austria, and even the Ottoman Empire.
Among the rarest of Jewish silver book bindings are those from Galicia. As opposed to Italy, the country where Jewish silver bindings are most numerous and where prayer books were thusly bound. Silver bindings in Galicia held printed Bibles, usually from Amsterdam. This binding is from Lviv from around 1800. Both the filigree work and the niello work are of superb quality. The work is probably that of a Jewish silversmith as Jews were heavily represented in this profession in Galicia, as they were involved in almost all manner of artisan skills. Another example, clearly by the same hand, was in the Zagayski collection and is now in the Jewish Museum in New York, a second is in the Levine Collection and a third in the Finkelstein Collection in Antwerp.