Spice Container

Since antiquity, the ceremony known as havdalah has marked the conclusion of Jewish Sabbaths and holy days. As early as the first centuries of this era, the smelling of aromatic spices was part of this ritual. Nevertheless, the first literary mention of a container for havdalah spices appears only in a twelfth-century source, and the earliest known example is this work, dated to the mid-sixteenth century.

The spice container is shaped like a four-story Gothic tower whose masonry is pierced by various openings: two rose windows; pairs of lancets with an oculus above, surrounded by an ogival arch; and rectangular fenestrations. A pinnacle with four surrounding turrets caps the tower. The silversmith created an appealing balance between the lightness provided by the openings and the heaviness of the articulated masonry, between the verticality of the tower form and the horizontality of the moldings and the balustrade separating the stories.

Comparison with a similar German table decoration suggests that The Jewish Museum's example dates from about 1550. Many parts of the work, including the balustrade, were repaired later. A second flat base was riveted to the original, and there are silver patches on the turrets. A Hebrew inscription on the back apparently dates these changes:

Rekhlah daughter of Eliezer Dayan [5]411 [= 1650/51]

That the earliest spice containers are shaped like towers is not surprising, given the widespread use of architectural forms in medieval metalwork, including censers for church ceremonies. It is very likely that the similarity in function between censers and spice containers (to give off aromatic odors) led to the adoption of the tower shape for havdalah containers. Among the objects made for Jews that are recorded in the sixteenth-century register of the Frankfurt Goldsmiths Guild is a Hedes oder Rauchfass. Hedes is a transliteration of the Hebrew for "myrtle" and was the term used for a spice container in the Middle Ages; the Frankfurt records equate it with Rauchfass, the German word for "censer."