Perfume burner or spice box, copper alloy with gilding, in the form of a tower with a pyramidal roof.

Perfume burner or spice box in the form of a tower with a pyramidal roof, the sides pierced with three rows of arcades; the whole supported on a cylindrical stem and round base. The pyramidal roof is hinged to allow the introduction of perfumes/spices.

Purchased from the sale of the Bernal Collection for the sum of £2.6s Od. (£2.30). When acquired in 1855 it was thought to be a reliquary.

Provenance

Ralph Bernal (1783-1854) was a renowned collector and objects from his collection are now in museums across the world, including the V&A. He was born into a Sephardic Jewish family of Spanish descent, but was baptised into the Christian religion at the age of 22. Bernal studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, and subsequently became a prominent Whig politician. He built a reputation for himself as a man of taste and culture through the collection he amassed and later in life he became the president of the British Archaeological Society. Yet the main source of income which enabled him to do this was the profits from enslaved labour.

In 1811, Bernal inherited three sugar plantations in Jamaica, where over 500 people were eventually enslaved. Almost immediately, he began collecting works of art and antiquities. After the emancipation of those enslaved in the British Caribbean in the 1830s, made possible in part by acts of their own resistance, Bernal was awarded compensation of more than £11,450 (equivalent to over £1.5 million today). This was for the loss of 564 people enslaved on Bernal's estates who were classed by the British government as his 'property'. They included people like Antora, and her son Edward, who in August 1834 was around five years old (The National Archives, T 71/49). Receiving the money appears to have led to an escalation of Bernal's collecting.

When Bernal died in 1855, he was celebrated for 'the perfection of his taste, as well as the extent of his knowledge' (Christie and Manson, 1855). His collection was dispersed in a major auction during which the Museum of Ornamental Art at Marlborough House, which later became the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A), was the biggest single buyer.

Jewish Worship
Judaism is the oldest religion in the world to worship the one God.World Jewry has three main groups: Sephardic, Askenazic and Mizrahi (the Jews who never left the Middle East). All are bound together by a common history and their adherence to the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) and the Talmud (a compendium of rabbinic law and lore).

Jewish religious traditions and rituals centre on the home, the community and the synagogue. Central to Judaism is the observance of the Sabbath. This is a holy day, set apart from the rest of the working week. It begins one hour before sunset on Friday and ends on Saturday evening when three stars can be seen in the night sky.

The Jewish year revolves around a number of festivals, such as Passover. These originated in ancient times and embody multiple layers of meaning, from agricultural festivals to historical events.

This spice box would have been used during the Havdalah ceremony. It is a ceremony which marks the conclusion of the Sabbath and holy days. In the ceremony of Havdalah aromatic spices are inhaled to revive the soul, after the departure of the special shabbat soul. Typical spices used at this time were wild myrtle, balsam, jasmine. rosemary, nutmeg or mixed spices. This spice box is one of the earliest known spice boxes of tower form. It dates to the 13th century. The first literary mention of a container for Havdalah spices appears in the 12th century. The incorporation of miniature architectural forms was a common practice in the medieval period and can be seen in this object as well as in censers. lamps and reliquaries. This rare spice box was acquired by the museum in 1855 and at that time thought to be a Christian reliquary. However, recent research for an exhibition on Jewish life in the Middle Ages has suggested that the object may simply be a perfume burner, and that it was made in Limoges, France, and not in Spain.

2090-1855