kiddush cup

Kiddush Cup
3 Feb 2024
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Thanks Debbie for this silver piece
no, it’s not a Christian House-visit Communion set item
my gut feeling of Kiddush Cup was a good one:
Alfred Taylor 1855 Birmingham
and the Date Letter Fraktur ‘O’ 1888 Hallmark
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The likely scenario is
1800’s witnessed Russo-Polish emigrées leaving behind the pogroms, and attracted to commercial opportunities in Birmingham, one chronicle says the first three families arrived 1873 and by 1882 Temple Emanu-El was built for 100 families — 15 years from the first arrivals.

Six years after Emanu-El’s founding Alfred Taylor must have been commissioned to create a few kiddush cup sets of six, and the example for this must have come from the family collection of one of the emigrées quite Russian in every way and exquisite: Alfred Taylor has made a breathtaking copy possibly by mould and two-piece pressed silver of quite special quality since it renders the Kiddush wine hues with wonderful eloquence.

The incised botanicals include gentian hinting at the bitter herbs of Passover — quite European iconography Ashkenazi — the zigzag is die-stamped — the blank cartouche is also in keeping with Baltic Judaism.

Fascinating to know the provenance of the kiddush cup.

The Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs laments the paucity of information and material for the study of British Jewry. There are no collections of Social Correspondence of emigrées to Birmingham in my period of focus 1873–1900.

This is a lovely silver item eloquent but deafeningly silent about the life it witnessed. Thanks again.