[Haggadah]

Large quarto (11 x 9 3/8 in.; 280 x 237 mm). Printed on vellum in Hebrew and English in variously colored inks; 14 full-page and numerous smaller color halftone reproductions of Szyk's drawings including decorative initials, vignettes and border decorations. Original blue crushed morocco elaborately gilt, covers tooled with image of a Hebrew prophet after Szyk, spine gilt in 7 compartments, gilt lettered in two, turn-ins gilt, by Sangorski and Sutcliffe, silk doublures printed with a monochromatic illustration of Moses supporting the Ten Commandments; original three-quarter morocco folding case. Pristine copy. 

Irvin Ungar, "Telling the Story: A History of the Szyk Haggadah", in ed. Sherwin and Ungar, Freedom Illuminated, Burlingame: Historicana, 2008.

limited edition, number 64 of 125 vellum copies signed by Szyk and Roth for sale in the British Empire

This Haggadah represents the culmination of a more than 1,000-year old tradition of illuminated Hebrew manuscripts dating back to the Middle Ages. Upon its publication, The Szyk Haggadah was described by the London Times as "a book worthy to be placed among the most beautiful of books that the hand of man has produced." Each individually illuminated text is an example of both extraordinary artistic accomplishment and of profound scholarship. There could be no more fitting subject for the milestone collaboration between Szyk, the Polish refugee and internationally acclaimed illuminator, and Dr. Cecil Roth, the preeminent British doyen of Jewish History.

Given the unfolding events in Nazi Europe, the Haggadah became for Szyk a personal and political statement. Dedicating his Exodus narrative to King George VI, Szyk acknowledged the key role that England, his temporary place of residence, had to play in Jewish survival. Of his accomplishment, Szyk has written: "I am but a Jew praying in art, and if I have worked, and if I have succeeded to some degree, if I have been favorably accepted among the elite of society, I owe it all to the teachings and the traditions, and the eternal virtues of my People."