Hanukkah Lamp

This particular type of hanging lamp, with its circular scrolls, buds, and palmette finial, was characteristic of Greece in the later nineteenth century. Examples with inscriptions and provenance come from Salonika in northern Greece, as well as from Corfu off the western Greek coast and from Cairo. Despite the complex political history of these three places, there was considerable movement of population and probably exchange of goods among them. Salonika was a major port city that served as a crossroads for trade with both east and west, and members of the large Jewish community, often half of the total population, were active as merchants and artisans. From 1430 to 1912 the city was under Turkish control.
Corfu was ruled by Venice from 1386 until 1797, after which it was subject to France and Britain until it was annexed by Greece in 1864. Many Greek Jews fled to Corfu in the 1820s, after Greek independence was achieved, since they had supported the Ottoman rulers. Greek Jews also settled in Egypt in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The lamp bears a certain similarity to Italian cast scrolled lamps and the shape of the oil containers is also paralleled in some Italian examples. Jews from Italy had settled in Greece beginning in the late fifteenth century, and, like other immigrants from Iberia, Hungary, North Africa, and eastern Europe, they maintained their own communities and synagogues. In two instances, the names inscribed on lamps of this type are Italian, although other nationalities are represented as well. Perhaps the type evolved from Italian prototypes and continued in use by descendants of Italian immigrants, and eventually spread to the larger Jewish population.