A German Silver Hanukkah Lamp, Matheus Städlein, Nuremberg, circa 1720

Sotheby's Tel Aviv, October 2, 1991, Lot 271

Stephen S. Kayser, Jewish Ceremonial Art, Philadelphia, 1955, no. 130, illus.

Susan Braunstein, Five Centuries of Hanukkah Lamps from the Jewish Museum, 2004, p. 67.

In the center are clippings of the Hanukkah candle lighting liturgy taken from a printed prayerbook.

Matheus Städlein, active 1716-1735, was a specialist in silver Judaica.  A very similar lamp by this maker, also with the opening in the backplate, is at the Jewish Museum, New York, gift of Dr. Harry G. Friedman, F197.  Susan Braunstein notes that of the six works by the maker known, five of them are Jewish ceremonial objects (Braunstein, op. cit.).