18th Century Habsburg Empire Silver Hanukkah Lamp Menorah

Cast brass Hanukkah Lamp, Galicia, 18th century. The backplate is cast and pierced featuring dense scrollwork. The side panels fitted with two servant lights, fronted by a row of eight oil fonts. Scholars theorize that these Polish Chanukah Lamps that bear two servant lights (as opposed to the singular servant light normally found on a Chanukah Lamp), served a purpose, having been used on one of the days that Chanukah fell on the Sabbath, as Sabbath Candlesticks. This lamp was made by the technique known as "sand casting". This process begins with a wooden mold that was carved out to create negative space, which in turn is used to make the inverse form or shape to be used for the casting of metal. The mold is pressed into fine sand mixed with clay, then removed, and molten brass poured into the impression. When a mold wears out, a casting from that mold is often used as the mold for the next generation. Those later lamps...

Handcut strips of silver that have been bent into curvilinear shapes, with semicircle of candle-sockets, complete with drip-pans. A cast-made pair of birds, appearing to be ducks or geese, flank the servant light, while at top as the finial, a large casting of a hen or rooster. While this overall form of lamp is known as hailing from Iraq, we cannot locate any other Iraqi lamps featuring the animals displayed on our example. Birds such as peacocks were widely used in Iraqi and other Middle-Eastern and North African Chanukah lamps, however the usage of the animals featured on our lamp likely have more to do with the surrounding Islamic culture than revealing any meaning in Judaism, which is typical overall for many motifs found on Jewish ritual...