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Wooden cane with a carved Orthodox Jewish man's beard as the grip

Object | Accession Number: 2016.184.56

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    Wooden cane with a carved Orthodox Jewish man's beard as the grip

    Overview

    Brief Narrative
    Black painted walking stick carved from a single piece of wood with the handle made in the shape of a grotesque looking Orthodox Jewish man with a kippah. European artisans commonly adorned everyday items such as ceramics, toys, and even walking sticks, with caricatures of Jewish faces. These walking sticks are examples of racial antisemitism becoming part of everyday life. This cane is one of the more than 900 items in the Katz Ehrenthal Collection of antisemitic artifacts and visual materials.
    Date
    creation:  approximately 1801-approximately 1899
    Geography
    creation: Europe
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Katz Family
    Contributor
    Compiler: Peter Ehrenthal
    Biography
    The Katz Ehrenthal Collection is a collection of more than 900 objects depicting Jews and antisemitic and anti-Jewish propaganda from the medieval to the modern era, in Europe, Russia, and the United States. The collection was amassed by Peter Ehrenthal, a Romanian Holocaust survivor, to document the pervasive history of anti-Jewish hatred in Western art, politics and popular culture. It includes crude folk art as well as pieces created by Europe's finest craftsmen, prints and periodical illustrations, posters, paintings, decorative art, and toys and everyday household items decorated with depictions of stereotypical Jewish figures.

    Physical Details

    Physical Description
    Painted wooden walking stick with a handle carved as a caricatured Jewish man’s head. The face, ears, and neck are stained brown and the kippah, hair, and cane shaft are painted black. At the tip is a rounded kippah above roughly carved ears and straight raised sidelocks and hair. There is a broad forehead with ridged eyebrows, wide, almond shaped eyes, and a large, flat, pointed nose. A painted mustache covers the thick upper lip. The large grimacing mouth is open, displaying 2 rows of white painted teeth. The beard is a cylindrical shaft that extends out and flattens downward at the end to form the grip. There is a wide curve at the chin where the neck extends to fomr the long, cylindrical, shaft. At the bottom is an indented, unpainted 2 inch flat bottomed cone with a loose, painted bronze colored metal band inserted around it. A metal ferrule was probably placed over this tip. There are finishing nails in the forehead, beard, and sides of the head and a crack in the skull cap.
    Dimensions
    overall: Height: 34.500 inches (87.63 cm) | Width: 1.375 inches (3.493 cm) | Depth: 3.250 inches (8.255 cm)
    Materials
    overall : wood, paint, varnish stain, metal

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    No restrictions on access
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    The walking stick was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2016 by the Katz Family.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this artifact has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Special Collection
    Katz Ehrenthal Collection
    Record last modified:
    2022-07-28 18:12:35
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn537146

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