Large Silver Megillah Case with Esther Scroll by Bezalel

#18359: Large Silver Megillah Case with Esther Scroll by Bezalel
Jerusalem, 20th century
Height 31cm, width 7cm, depth 5cm

This chased megillah case holds a handwritten parchment scroll of the Book of Esther and is decorated in the idiom associated with the Bezalel School of Jerusalem. Esther is one of the five megillot, or scrolls, of the biblical canon, and the only one commonly read from a handwritten parchment scroll. It records the deliverance of the Jewish community of the Persian Empire from Haman's plan to destroy it, and is read aloud each year at Purim, the festival marking that deliverance. Because the scroll is unrolled and read in company, its case became a natural focus for decoration, made to be handled as much as displayed.
The case takes a cylindrical form with a domed cover surmounted by a ball finial, and a tapering handle below terminating in a ribbed dome. The cylinder is flat-chased across its whole surface with trailing vine, bunches of grapes, pomegranates and dense foliage, interrupted by bands of Hebrew lettering that run around the body. An oval cartouche, left blank, is applied to the front within a scalloped and rope-twist border.
Beaded and rope-twist mouldings divide the cylinder from the domed cover and from the lower collar, each chased with further grapevine and inscription, and the handle is mounted with collars worked in imitation of filigree. The scroll is written in Hebrew in ruled columns and wound on a rod with a small silver finial, and draws out from the side of the case.
The lower collar is struck with a row of three incuse stamps: בצלאל (Bezalel) and ירושלים (Jerusalem) in Hebrew, followed by 925 for the silver standard.
The Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts was founded in Jerusalem in 1906 by the artist Boris Schatz, with the aim of forming a national artistic idiom from biblical subject matter, Hebrew lettering and the ornamental traditions of the Near East. Its metalwork, with grapevine, pomegranate and palm worked in dense low relief alongside filigree and applied bosses, set the vocabulary for much of the silver Judaica made in Jerusalem through the twentieth century.
$18,000