Fine Tower-Shaped, Filigreed Spicebox – Adorned with Figures Enacting the Havdalah Ceremony – Kingdom of Hungary ...

Fine Tower-Shaped, Filigreed Spicebox – Adorned with Figures Enacting the Havdalah Ceremony – Kingdom of Hungary, Probably Nitra (Today, Slovakia), or Pest (Today, Budapest), 18th century

Silver, cast, sawed, and engraved; parcel gilt; filigree
Hallmarks: · Two of the figures marked "13"; · The initials "AM", perhaps a maker's mark.
High-quality havdalah spicebox ("Hadas") in the form of a belltower, with a tall, tapering steeple surmounted by a flag. Cubic, filigreed spice compartment with a small door, to be closed with a dead bolt lock. The compartment’s four corners are each adorned with thick, coiled silver-thread flagpoles with gilt flags on top of them. Surmounting each of the four flags are miniature male figures (also gilt) enacting the four essential, customary parts of the havdalah ceremony, with one figure holding a wine cup, another holding a siddur, a third, a tower-shaped spicebox, and a fourth, a braided havdalah candle. Spicebox supported on a gilt shaft, on top of a dome-shaped filigreed base with a gilt rim.

Height: 31.5 cm. Fractures and old repairs to filigree, in the base. Fracture to filigreed base of steeple/flagpole, professionally mended. Gilt silver spherical knob not original.

Reference: Chaya Benjamin and Marilyn Gold Koolik, Towers of Spice: The Tower-Shape Tradition in Havdalah Spiceboxes (exhibition catalogue), The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1982, item nos. 65-68, V, XIX (in the Hebrew version), especially item no. 67. Two 18th-century Havdalah objects originating from Nitra, featuring miniature figures and bearing a similar "13" hallmark, are showcased in the Stieglitz collection, item nos. 60-61.

Exhibitions:

1. Presumably, London, Exhibition of Jewish Art and Antiquities, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1906, item no. 1127.
2. Presumably, Glasgow, Festival of Jewish Arts Exhibition, McLellan Galleries, 1951, item no. 247.
3. Basel, Jewish Museum of Switzerland, JMS 1041.
Provenance:
1. Collection of Solomon David Schloss (1815-1911).
2. Lewis Raphael Castle (1858-1932), son of the above.
3. Peter Castle (1922-2011), grandson of the above.
4. Heirs of the above.
This item appears in the inventory list of the Schloss Collection, dated 1923 (see appendix, pp. 146-148), and is documented in a 1931 collection photograph (see p. 11).