A Magnificent Embroidered Cover for a Reader’s Desk, Italy, 18th century

A Magnificent Embroidered Cover for a Reader’s Desk, Italy, 18th century

This splendid textile was created to cover a reader’s desk (known as a bimah or teivah), a platform in the synagogue on which the Torah is read and from which the prayers are recited. The elaborately worked design features two central cartouches containing clusters of grapes hanging from vines, surrounded by a lavish border of floral motifs. The two prominently located grape clusters are evidently the family emblem of the Viterbo family, the word vite meaning “grapevine” in Italian. This same emblem is also found on a highly similar Torah ark curtain created by Simhah Viterbo in 1755 and now in the collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum (Object #2:2019).

Physical Description

Royal blue silk ground richly embroidered in a variety of stitches with multicolored, bright silk threads, as well as silver and gold metallic wrapped threads, trimmed with gold metallic ribbon and bordered by a gilt fringe on three sides (36 x 47 in.; 915 x 1195 mm). 

Literature    

Dora Liscia Bemporad and Olga Melasecchi (eds.), Tutti i colori dell'Italia ebraica: tessuti preziosi dal Tempio di Gerusalemme al prêt-à-porter

 (Florence: Giunti Editore, 2019).

Bracha Yaniv, “‘This Is the Table that Stands before the Lord:’ On the Synagogue

B

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or Teivah Cover,” Review of Rabbinic Judaism 14 (2011): 208-220.