The Israeli painter, sculptor, ceramicist, and textile designer Siona Shimshi was born in Tel Aviv to a family that had migrated to Palestine from Lithuania. Shimshi studied at the Avni Institute from 1956 to 1959 and went on to study ceramics at Alfred University and, from 1959 to 1962, at Greenwich House Pottery in New York. While in Israel, in 1966 Shimshi helped found the art group Ten+. From 1979 to 1987, she chaired the Department of Ceramic Design at the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts. Her ceramic sculptures are often figurative busts in which she emphasizes or manipulates discrete facial features to express complex ideas and narrative themes.
When a human being builds a palace, he does not build it according to his own wisdom, but according to the wisdom of a craftsman. And the craftsman does not build according to his own wisdom, rather…
This silver, repoussé, punched, engraved, and cast Torah shield, decorated with flowers and bunches of grapes, from Metz, France, is inscribed in Hebrew: C[rown of] T[orah]; Festival of Shavuot.
The translated text comes from the frontispiece, pictured here. It was presumably coauthored by Ricchi and the publisher, Solomon Proops.
Commentaries and novellae on the six orders of the Mishnah; a…