100 Objects #44
AMONG THE 30,000-plus items within the Jewish Museum London’s collection, there are certain pieces that stand out as true highlights of British Jewish heritage. The 19th-century mizrach tablet that used to hang in the museum’s stairwell is certainly one of these. Originally made for Sir Moses Montefiore, the mizrach is not only recognised for its beautiful decoration and iconography, but equally special due to its history and manufacture.
Let’s start with a brief background to Montefiore himself, arguably one of the most important Jewish figures of the 19th century. He was born in Livorno, Italy in 1784, though his Sephardic family were already based in London, his grandfather having emigrated in the 1740s. As a child, Montefiore attended school in Kennington but began working at an early age to support the family. As a young man in his late teens, his uncle Moses Mocatta secured him a position as a broker on the London Stock Exchange, but it wasn’t until he married Judith Cohen, sister-inlaw of Nathan Meyer Rothschild, that he began to make his fortune; Montefiore’s firm acted as stockbrokers to the Rothschilds and the connection, combined with Moses’ innovation as a businessman, led to several wise investments in gas supply and insurance companies.
Having achieved success, Montefiore began philanthropic activities in the Middle East, with many considering him to be a founding father of modern Israel. The extraordinary breadth of his contacts with individual communities brought the Jewish world together in a new way; his travels and philanthropy played a crucial role in the formation of modern Jewish consciousness.
In 1835 he was made Sheriff of the City of London and from 1835 to 1838 he was president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Montefiore was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1837 for these services, then later made a Baronet in 1846.
Although Judith Cohen was Ashkenazi, Moses worshipped at the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Synagogue in Bevis Marks, serving for many years as president of its Board of Elders. But it was in Ramsgate, Kent, where Montefiore opened his own synagogue close to his country house, that the story comes back round to the mizrach tablet.
When I first saw the mizrach on the wall at the museum, I had assumed that it must be made out of a type of stone; marble or slate. I was easily tricked because the actual material is scagliola, a marble-like material made from plaster, pigments and glue, nicknamed “artificial-stone”.
This in itself is a good indicator that the mizrach was manufactured at the height of the industrial revolution, and it would have been extremely expensive to design and make. It was intended to be inlaid into the wall-decoration of one of the buildings on the Montefiore estate, possibly the Judith Lady Montefiore College, which opened as a Rabbinical college in 1869.
The tablet’s decorative pattern follows the tradition of the east and central European mizrach plaques. Most strikingly are the most common Jewish symbols of the Menorah and the Ten Commandments.
In addition, there are two specific details from the Montefiore coat of arms which based on his Italian family crest, contain a lion, a cedar tree and some hills that he registered in Britain in 1819; at the bottom of the mizrach there are two Cedars of Lebanon that flank a representation of Jerusalem (central to Montefiore’s interests); at the top, a lion and a stag hold banners inscribed “Jerusalem” in Hebrew characters. These bannerholding supporters were added to Montefiore’s coat of arms in 1841 by a special licence from Queen Victoria, in appreciation of his diplomatic activities on behalf of persecuted Jews in the Ottoman Empire – quite a statement in 19thcentury England!
The mizrach was acquired in 2011 with the assistance of The Art Fund, the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Michael and Morven Heller Charitable Foundation.