34 
House & Garden 
I 
i 
The Hannukah light has eight 
bowls for oil and wicks, one be¬ 
ing lighted each night during the 
feast until all are burning 
Although very beautiful in 
design and elaborately deco¬ 
rated, the two pairs of silver- 
plated candlesticks above are 
Warsaw factory work 
rich American work as time goes on. 
The antique Russian candlesticks 
which one is able to collect in Amer¬ 
ica are, of course, those that have 
been brought by the Russian famil¬ 
ies. They are of several types — 
single candlesticks, designed to hold 
a single candle, Chanuca lights, and 
wall sconces. Of the three, five, six, 
seven and nine light branch candle¬ 
sticks very few are to be found in 
this country. In ten years I have 
not seen over ten or twelve genuine 
old branch candlesticks. The most 
that one sees of this type are repro¬ 
ductions made in this country. 
Of the single candlesticks there 
are many varieties of type and an 
infinite variety of designs of these 
various types. The reason for this 
is that in early times in every village, 
town and city of Russia, Galicia 
and Roumania which had a Jewish 
population there would be found a 
coppersmith making copper cooking 
pots and casting heavy brass candle¬ 
sticks. Judging by the large num- 
The two candle sockets in the 
Hannukah light—sometimes there 
is only one—are the schamus, 
and are lighted during the service 
The tray, mortar, pestle and 
candlesticks comprise the usual 
wedding gifts from the mother 
to the bride through many 
generations 
bers of designs of candlesticks one 
sees, each coppersmith evidently had 
a different kind of mold for casting. 
These candlesticks were made large¬ 
ly for wedding presents, as it is a 
Jewish custom that when a daughter 
of the family marries and the wed¬ 
ding guests are assembled, the 
mother places on the table her mar¬ 
riage gifts to her daughter, consist¬ 
ing of a pair of candlesticks, a tray 
and a mortar and pestle. This cus¬ 
tom was universal throughout Rus¬ 
sia. 
The single brass candlesticks of 
Russia are very heavy, much more 
so than the Galician ones, also less 
ornamented with rings, chasing and 
engraving. The Galician ones are, 
in turn, heavier than the single brass 
candlesticks of Roumania. 
Occasionally one will see beauti¬ 
ful specimens of old Russian silver 
single candlesticks beaten out of 
pure silver. The light, thin brass 
candlesticks that are electro-plated 
(Continued on page 64) 
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