Obj. ID: 37535 Candlesticks (Sabbath), Israel/Eretz Israel, circa 1943
sub-set tree:
The following description was prepared by William Gross:
Shabbat lights are kindled on Friday evening to usher in the Jewish Sabbath. This lighting is a Rabbinically mandated law, representing 1 of the 3 primary Jewish female obligations. During the ceremony, the woman recites a blessing. There are containers for holding the material to be kindled that are in multiple forms and fashioned from various materials.
There exist very few silver Judaica objects in the style of Art Deco, most are of German origin. Of the few makers known, one of the major artists working after 1925 was Bernhard Friedlaender of Dusseldorf. While very few of the objects he created have survived the Holocaust, there are many pictures of objects by him in the archives of the pre-war Jewish Museum of Berlin. These images are now held at the ZIH in Warsaw. Friedlaender emigrated to Palestine at some point in the 1930's where he continued to work in silver during the remainder of that decade. His work is very much in concert with that of two other German emigres to Palestine, Ludwig Wolpert, and Gumbel. Apparently, because of a lack of customers for more expensive silver objects, Friedlaender began to work in silver-plated brass and signed by him. He then apparently purchased the firm of "Michsaf", which produced such silver-plated brass objects according to his designs. Objects from all these periods exist in the Gross Family Collection.