Monumental Micrographic Synagogue Plaque, Abraham Pike, New York: 1856

1 broadside (33 x 25 1/2 in.; 838 x 643 mm). Written in brown ink on paper, some ink biting, though prominent only along a horizontal fold in lower half. A small loss at right margin affecting a few words. Glazed and framed (not examined outside frame.) 

Judaica at the Smithsonian: Cultural Politics as Cultural Model, Grace Cohen Grossman and Richard E. Ahlborn, eds. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997, pp. 138-9.

Micrography, the scribal practice of employing minuscule script to create abstract shapes or figurative designs, is an art form that has been used by Jews for over a millennium. This extraordinary micrographic shiviti, using a wide variety of biblical and rabbinic Hebrew texts, was created by an American-born Jewish artist named Abraham Pike in 1856, a rare early example of this artform in the United States. It may indeed be the earliest example of a Hebrew micrography created in the United States by an American-born Jew.

Abraham Pike was born in 1843/4 in Richmond, VA, the son of Polish Jewish immigrants. In addition to producing two American masterpieces of Jewish art, over the course of his life, Abraham worked as a clerk, pawnbroker, and auctioneer before passing away in Baltimore, MD in 1897. 

Only one other example of Pike’s exquisitely rendered micrographic mastery is known, a Mizrah plaque of similar dimensions in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution (though there mistakenly attributed to a non-Jewish artist with a similar name). When Pike’s daughter Sadie Kann (née Pike) gifted the work to the Smithsonian in 1920, she reported that it had been done by her late father when he was just a teenager. In fact, he could have been no more than nineteen years of age when that piece was completed in 1862. Even more startling is the fact that the present lot was completed six years earlier, when the clearly gifted Abraham Pike was only thirteen years old. The level of artistic virtuosity accomplished by this young man is quite simply, remarkable.

The decorative motifs appearing on this plaque include: a central vignette depicting Moses and Aaron (wearing his priestly vestments and carrying the censer) flanking the Ark of the Covenant and The Tablets of The Law bearing the Ten Commandments. At Moses’ feet is the Incense Altar, and at Aaron’s, the Shewbread Table. The pillars on either side are nearly totally accomplished in micrographic script, including, at their base, depictions of the Copper Altar at left, and the Ark of the Covenant, surmounted by the Cherubim at right. The liberal use of flowers, fruits, and vines, among the various texts as well as in a continuous and unending border surrounding the whole work convey an amazing sense of bounty and hopefulness, confirmed by the presence of two cornucopia, labeled the “Horn of Salvation” and the “Horn of the Messiah.”  As if to drive home the point, at the apex of this grand and imposing synagogue plaque are the twin representations of a cautiously confident, yet optimistic, Jewish community in America: the Five Books of Moses and a modified version of the Great Seal of the United States.

The widely variegated micrographic and macrographic texts include sections derived from each of the three divisions of the Hebrew Bible, Torah (The Pentateuch), Nevi’im (The Prophets), and Ketuvim (The writings) as well as selections from Rabbinic literature, and are marked by the appellations Torah she-be-`al peh, ("Torah that is spoken") and Torah she-bi-khtav ("Torah that is written"). A complete listing of the texts used by the artist is available upon request.