These richly decorated Torah finials (rimonim), cast in silver and partly gilt, and adorned with many bells and topped with crowns, were created in London. Of the few surviving seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English Torah finials, some were made by the non-Jewish silversmith William Spackman (active 1703–1726). He followed the style established by Abraham de Oliveyra, a silversmith from Amsterdam, who is credited as the maker of other early English finials. These finials were eventually used in the Great Synagogue of Sydney, Australia, which was established in the early nineteenth century.
Rothenstein was one of the best-known and most prolific British portraitists of the first half of the twentieth century. His style confounds easy characterization. He considered himself both a…
Fanny Hensel (1805–1847), the granddaughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and financier Daniel Itzig, and sister of the composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, was born in Hamburg into a wealthy…
This silver circumcision set was crafted in Salonika in the Ottoman Empire. The cylindrical silver casket holds a circumcision knife; its handle is made from agate. A similarly shaped powder box and…