Hanukkah Lamp

The form and decoration of this tour de force of the silversmith's art are derived from those of the Torah arks of Polish synagogues of the eighteenth century. Arks are wooden or stone structures designed to house the most sacred object in Judaism, the Torah (first five books of the Hebrew Bible). Those of eastern Europe were particularly ornate, consisting of multistoried structures ornamented with elaborate openwork wooden carving. Their style was related both to the European Baroque and Rococo, in their scrollwork and twisted columns, and to local folk art, in their profusion of animals and birds that filled the curling vines.
In this lamp, the ark has been rendered in pierced silver repoussé work that has been partly gilded, and mounted on a brass back, allowing for a lively contrast of gold and silver. A "balcony" under the ark doors supports the oil containers in the form of leaping lions. Below, the double-headed eagle of Austria proudly spreads its wings, as Brody was under Austrian rule when this lamp was made. The fact that it was designed to hang on the wall, rather than stand on feet, makes this lamp highly unusual for eastern Europe. Wall-hung Hanukkah lamps were more of a tradition of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews of, respectively, Iberian and Middle Eastern origin. Jews did immigrate to Poland from many lands, including Spain and Italy in the fourteenth century, and a century later there was quite active trade between Jews of the Brody region and Venice, home of a Sephardi community. Thus, the hanging lamp may reflect the holdover of customs brought by immigrants and traders.
The Jews of Brody were granted the right to engage in all types of crafts in 1699, and by the eighteenth century Jewish metalsmiths were renowned for the quality of their work. The maker of this Hanukkah lamp is unrecorded, and could possibly have been Jewish.
Other lamps of this type were created in the same region of Galicia and date to the second half of the eighteenth century. Standing versions of the silver ark-shaped lamp appeared in the 1870s, and twentieth-century imitations of the wall-hung lamps are known as well.