Auction 75 - Rare and Important Items
Torah scroll, written in miniscule script, in the "Vavei HaAmudim" format, based on the contemporary Tikkun Soferim. Wound on rollers.
The scroll is cloaked in a green velvet mantle, bearing the gilt-embroidered letters Vav and Yud, a Star of David and foliate designs, as well as rhinestones. The mantle is edged with metallic bobbin lace. Openings for the rollers were cut into the top of the mantle, unskillfully edged and causing damage to lace. Drawstring at the bottom of the mantle; the mantle appears to have been made as a tefillin pouch, which was later converted to serve as Torah mantle.
Height of parchment: 13 cm. Height of rollers: approx. 30 cm. Mantle: 19X15.5 cm. Good-fair condition. Unskilled hand stitches and late machine stitches to velvet mantle. Threadbare areas. Damage and some loss to embroidery. Fracture (repaired with glue) at base of one roller.
Square cutwork and whitework white tablecloth, with floral border, strewn with small flowers all over. The center embroidered with the Shabbat night Kiddush text, a chronogram and a monogram of the letters "EB". The chronogram, "Shafra alay", translating as "yea, I have a goodly heritage" (Psalms 16:6), may indicate the lady of the household's first name, Shifra.
Approx. 117X117 cm. Fair-good condition. Blemishes. Many stains. Tears to edges, some with minor loss. Tarnished silver thread.
The entire Book of Esther is micrographically inscribed in the center of the work in the form of a wheel, 4.5 cm in diameter. Dated in a chronogram translating as "See you this wheel and observe well my excellent handiwork". The hub of the wheel bears the title "Scroll of Esther", surmounted by a crown. The wheel is framed by a gate, surmounted by an eagle. On either side of the gate are columns, decorated with vases filled with flowers.
Beneath the wheel and gate is an acrostic poem, in elegant script, alluding to the artist's name. The poem concludes with his pen name, "Hillel ben Shahar" (for text of poem, please refer to Hebrew).
Rabbi Yehuda Leib (Judah Leo) Landau (1866-1942), native of Załośce, near Tarnopol, Galicia (today Ternopil, western Ukraine). Descendant of the "Chacham Tzvi" and Yehezkel Landau, author of "Noda BiYehuda". In 1889, the year this micrographic work was created, Yehuda Leib moved to the nearby Galician city of Brody, where he completed his high school education; until then he had been schooled in Torah studies at the batei midrash run by his father and grandfather. He later attended the Rabbinical Seminary in Vienna where he was ordained, and the University of Vienna where he earned a doctorate in philosophy. In 1901, he was appointed Rabbi of the North Manchester Congregation in England, and in 1903, he became the rabbi of the Johannesburg Hebrew Congregation in South Africa. He was made Chief Rabbi of South Africa in 1912. He taught at Witwatersrand University, where he was the first person to hold the chair of Hebrew Literature. He had begun publishing his own writings in Yiddish at the age of 13, and over time, he also published in Hebrew and English. His works included articles, nonfiction books, plays, prose, and poetry. He wrote under a number of different pen names, including "Sofer Ivri" (Hebrew Scribe), "Hillel ben Shahar" (a reference to both his own name and that of his father, Moshe Issakhar), and "Dr. Morgenstern". See enclosed material.
[1] f., 15X17.5 cm. Diam. of micrography: 4.5 cm. Good-fair condition. Browned paper, with stains. Abrasions to paper, slightly affecting decorations and text. Minor worming. Minor tears to edges. Matted and framed; 25X27 cm with frame.
Cotton knot-pile; wool foundation.
The rug, inspired by Tabriz wildlife-motif rugs (of which the Chelsea Carpet at the Victoria and Albert Museum is a famous example), features symmetrical arabesque floral motifs alternating with hunting scenes, game and animals of prey. Signed "Marbadiah" twice on the edge of the central panel.
Approx. 245X210 cm. Good-fair condition. General fading and wear. Slightly misshapen. A few restorations. Some unraveling to edges. 14 cm tear, repaired.
Literature: Jewish Carpets, by Anton Felton. Woodbridge: Antique Collectors' Club, 1997, p. 123.
Provenance: The Anton Felton Collection.
Cotton knot-pile; wool foundation.
This especially large rug features a design of close-knit medallions, each containing an example of Holy Land flora, including stalks of wheat, palm trees, cypresses and vine leaves, the Temple façade, or an amphora. Many of these motifs were inspired by ancient Jewish and Roman coins struck circa the first century AD, in the times of Herod Agrippa, the Great Revolt and the Destruction of the Second Temple. Smaller medallions show Stars of David, the Tablets of the Law and floral designs. The main border depicts an alternating pattern of palm and cypress trees within medallions; the secondary borders depict a continuous braid and repeating amphorae holding flowers in the shape of Stars of David.
Approx. 340X304 cm. Good condition. General fading. Minor damages. Suspension strip sewn along edge on verso.
Literature: Jewish Carpets, by Anton Felton. Woodbridge: Antique Collectors' Club, 1997, p. 120.
Provenance: The Anton Felton Collection.
Watercolor on paper, mounted on cardboard. Signed.
47.5X31.5 cm. Good condition.
Yisakhar Ber Rybak (1897-1935), native of Elisavetgrad, Russia (today Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine), painter, graphic artist, and sculptor; one of the most prominent artists of the Russian-Jewish avant-garde. Studied at the Academy of Art in Kiev and in the studio of Aleksandra Ekster. In 1915-16, he was a member of the ethnographic expedition, headed by Shlomo An-ski, that aimed to document the culture of the Jewish communities of Podolia and Volhynia, and, working side-by-side with El Lissitzky, he produced copy-sketches of tombstones and monuments and documented the popular art he observed in the wooden synagogues of villages in the Pale of Settlement. For Rybak, this experience marked the beginnings of an enduring love affair with themes borrowed from popular Jewish tradition, and these themes and motifs provided the elemental foundations for his future work. He became one of the most active and outspoken artists of the "Kultur Lige" ("Culture League"), and taught drawing in the school that operated under the auspices of its art division. In 1921, he moved to Berlin, where he joined the "November Gruppe" and participated in joint exhibitions with other member artists. Rybak subsequently returned briefly to the Soviet Union and then moved to Paris, where he died in 1935.
The album "Shtetl, Meyn Horever Heiym" ("Shtetl, My House in Ruins"), published in 1923, has been widely regarded as one of the pinnacles of Rybak’s career. The album’s twenty-nine lithographs, documenting life in the shtetl, were created in the immediate aftermath of a horrendous wave of pogroms – in one of which his own father was murdered – that ravaged the towns and villages of the Pale of Settlement following the First World War. The lithographs focus on a typical Jewish shtetl, its houses, and the craftsmen who lived and labored in them. The works capture selected moments in the lives of these shtetls and present a frozen image which serves as a lamentation for the artist’s boyhood environs, documenting scenes that would never again be the same as they once were.
Provenance: The Estate of Yisakhar Ber Rybak.
Yingl Tsingl Khvat [The Mischievous Boy], by Mani Leib [Menachem Leib Brahinsky]. Kiev-St. Petersburg: Yiddisher Folks-Farlag, [1919]. Yiddish. First edition.
Rhymed tale for children by the Yiddish poet Mani Leib – the story of a mischievous boy who succeeds in bringing the first snow of winter to a Jewish town where autumn lingers. The tale is accompanied by black-and-white illustrations by El Lissitzky. Color illustration by Lissitzky on front cover.
[12] pp, 26 cm. Good condition. The leaves are detached from each other (lacking staples). Stamps on several leaves. Stains (the leaves are mostly clean). Tears along the spine. Tears to edges of cover, some open and some restored.
Provenance: The Uriel Kahana Collection (his signature appears on the upper right corner of the front cover).
El (Eliezer Lazar Markovich) Lissitzky (1890-1941), a Jewish-Russian artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect, one of the most prominent and important members of the Russian avant-garde.
Lissitzky, an architect by training, contributed much, together with his teacher and friend Kazimir Malevich, to the conceptualization and development of the Suprematism movement – the abstract art focused on geometric forms. He also designed numerous books and journals, exhibitions, and propaganda posters for the communist regime in Russia and influenced the Bauhaus and Constructivist movements in Europe. In his early days, Lissitzky showed much interest in Jewish culture and many of his works integrated Jewish motifs (during the years 1915-1916, he took part in the ethnographic expedition headed by Shlomo An-ski to the Pale of Settlement). Wanting to promote Jewish culture in Russia after the revolution, he became engaged in designing and illustrating Yiddish children's books, creating several children's books which are considered pioneering masterpieces due to their graphics and typography. However, several years later, he abandoned the Jewish motifs in favor of developing a more abstract and universal artistic language.
In 1921, Lissitzky moved to Germany, where he served as the Russian cultural ambassador, engaged in forming connections between Russian and German artists and continued to design books and journals. Lissitzky, who perceived books as immortal artifacts, "monuments of the future" by his definition, used the medium as a tool for spreading the messages of avant-garde and his artistic perception, as indicated by the variety of books in whose design, production or illustration he took part – beginning with children's books and books of poetry and ending with catalogs, guidebooks and research books.
Lissitzky died in Moscow at the age of 51. In his final years, his artistic work was dedicated mainly to soviet propaganda; yet it seems that the same worldview accompanied his works throughout his life – the belief in goal-oriented creation (Zielbewußte Schaffen, the German term he coined) and the power of art to influence and bring about change.