Auction 79 Judaica from the Finkelstein Family Collection
Jun 21, 2021
8 Ramban St, Jerusalem., Israel

The auction has ended

LOT 50:

Decorated Passover Seder Bowl – With Hebrew and Russian Inscriptions – Polonne, Bilotyn, or Kamenny-Brod, Russian ...

catalog
  Previous item
Next item 

Start price:
$ 10,000
Estimated price:
$20,000 - $30,000
Auction house commission: 25%
VAT: 17% On commission only
tags:

Decorated Passover Seder Bowl – With Hebrew and Russian Inscriptions – Polonne, Bilotyn, or Kamenny-Brod, Russian Empire, 19th Century
Decorated earthenware Passover seder bowl, inscribed in Hebrew and Russian, product of one of the china factories owned by Moisei (Moshe) Shapiro in either Polonne or Bilotyn/Kamenny-Brod, Ukraine, Russian Empire, late 1870s to late 1890s.
Off-white bowl, with six medallions at center, representing each of the six basic ingredients on the classic seder plate, namely the bitter herb, shank-bone, haroset, horseradish, green vegetable, and egg. Each ingredient is accompanied by captions in Hebrew and Russian. Interestingly, for the "shank-bone, " the depiction actually shows a chicken neck, in keeping with a custom of using it as a substitute for shank, and the caption in Russian corresponds accordingly. Above the medallions is an illustration of a livestock animal – part sheep, part goat; above and below it are Hebrew and Russian inscriptions meaning "Passover Offering." The lip of the bowl is also decorated; enclosed within eight cartouches framed with geometric patterns are the titles of seven of the fourteen stages of the Passover seder, from "Kadesh" to "Motzi Matzah, " and inside two adjoining medallions are the two Hebrew words "Seder HaKe'arah" ("Order of the Plate [or Bowl]") with the (partly missing) Russian translation underneath.Evidently, the inscription process was not adequately planned, and insufficient space was allowed for the texts. The bowl was apparently modeled after bilingual Hebrew-English porcelain seder plates or bowls produced in England from the mid-19th century onward.
The bowl is marked on the underside with an elliptical stamp bearing the Russian name "Шапира" ("Shapira"). The digit "2" appears above this. Also on the underside is an undeciphered printed Russian inscription: "Э.Т. и ко М.Т." The mark indicates that the bowl was produced in one of workshops owned by the porcelain manufacturer Moisei (Moshe) Shapiro, sometime between the 1870s and 1890s.
Moisei (Moshe) Shapiro is associated with two or three different porcelain workshops / factories, in the rural villages of Bilotyn and Kamenny-Brod and in the city of Polonne. All three of these businesses were under the ownership of Shapiro for certain periods of time between the years 1876 and 1897. The shop in Bilotyn was established in the 1850s or 1860s and was bought by a Jewish industrialist by the name of Fischel Zussman. According to a number of sources, this business in Bilotyn was sold by Zussman to Shapiro in 1880, and remained in operation until it burned down in 1889. Other sources suggest that Zussman had already moved the workshop to Kamenny-Brod in 1874, and began renting it out to Shapiro in 1876. Shapiro then purchased the business in 1880, and continued operating it until it burned down in 1889. That same year, Shapiro established a porcelain workshop in Polonne; in 1897, he sold it to Zussman. The dishes manufactured at the workshop in Polonne under Zussman's ownership are well-documented, but only one other extant plate – commemorating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's discovery of America – is known to us from Moisei Shapiro's time.
Regardless of whether this particular seder bowl was made in Bilotyn or Kamenny-Brod or Polonne, it is an utterly unique piece of Judaica, representing an unfamiliar aspect in the history of Jewish-owned porcelain industry in the Russian Empire in the late 19th century.
Diameter: 23 cm. Fractures. Minor blemishes and stains.
Article written based on an expert report by Dr. Anna Berezin, The Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

catalog
  Previous item
Next item