Hanukkah Lamp

Bohemia and Moravia are today in the political entity known as the Czech Republic. They were part of the Habsburg Empire, centered in Austria, from 1526 to 1918. This lamp, made in Moravia, bears certain features of Austrian silver lamps, including an Austrian hallmark, the spoon-shaped oil containers, and the openwork backplate. However, other aspects of the silverwork are more characteristic of Bohemia and Moravia. The delicacy of the backplate imagery and style is a feature of Brno silver, as seen, for example, in a Torah shield dated 1813. Other Czech features include a tendency to more diminutive forms in lamps, the simple curved strips for legs, and the absence of a drip pan below the oil containers.
Brno, where this lamp was made, was one of six royal cities in Moravia. The rulers expelled Jews from these centers in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and the expulsion remained in force until 1848, after this lamp was made. Despite the prohibition against living in Brno, individual Jews settled illegally, and by the eighteenth century they were allowed to worship in private, set up a Hebrew printing press, and even came to own the city bank. However, a full community was not established until emancipation.
Although the maker of this lamp is unidentified, theoretically he could have been Jewish. By the sixteenth century, individual Jewish goldsmiths were granted privileges to work in Prague, and by the seventeenth century all Bohemian Jews were allowed to practice crafts. Excluded from the Christian guilds, Jews of this period formed their own, which later received official sanction, in 1805.