Hanukkah Lamp

By the mid-nineteenth and into the early twentieth century, converter lamps became popular among Jews in Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. These consisted of an upper section of a menorah-form lamp that had a socket at the bottom which could be inserted into a candlestick. This no doubt allowed manufacturers to sell lamps more cheaply, since the purchaser need only buy the top portion and could use candlesticks already in his or her possession, probably Sabbath lights. There are numerous examples in the collection of just the upper parts, as well as sets in which the candlesticks were made by a different artist.
The firm of Jan Pogorzelski was one of several Warsaw silversmiths producing this type of lamp with grape clusters and leaves entwined around the arms. The earliest examples, by Michael Swinarksi and Pogorzelski, date to the 1850s and 1860s. Reproductions are known from the later twentieth century. For example, the Grand Street Silver Company in New York ambitiously advertised its version as a reproduction of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century pieces, and extolled a special feature: the arms could be rotated for use as a secular candelabrum.