Circular Plate for Ben Uri

Following the outbreak of the First World War, Berson moved to London, where he set up a portrait studio and wrote articles for Jewish and Yiddish newspapers. In 1915, he realised his long-held ambition of forming a society for Jewish art when he founded 'The Jewish-National Decorative Art Association (London) Ben Ouri', in Whitechapel. In 'the Ben Uri studio' in West London he brought together a number of East End artisans, who together with the jeweller Moshe Oved worked on a series of decorative 'Jewish' designs on wooden plates and bowls. This plate, signed by Berson, has been identified by David Mazower as typical of Berson trademark style of lettering, employing elaborate, curved shapes, with inner decoration, much like his plate dedicated to Israel Zangwill (Jewish Museum). The Hebrew lettering on this plate: Ha lachma anya di achalu avatana a mitzraim, has the first line of Ha Lakhma Anya, the Aramaic poem in the Haggadah, translating as This is the bread of affliction our ancestors ate in Egypt.