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Wooden cane with a grip carved as grotesque Jewish man

Object | Accession Number: 2016.184.63

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    Wooden cane with a grip carved as grotesque Jewish man

    Overview

    Brief Narrative
    Wooden walking staff with a grip handle carved as a Jewish man with a huge nose and a grimace that reveals his missing teeth. 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 walking stick is one of the more than 900 items in the Katz Ehrenthal Collection of antisemitic artifacts and visual materials.
    Date
    creation:  approximately 1830-approximately 1870
    Geography
    creation: Germany
    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
    Dark brown, varnished wooden walking stick with an elongated, modified L-shaped handle carved as a caricatured head of a Jewish man with a rounded, angled kippah. It has pronounced, stereotypical features: a prominent brow above deepset, hooded eyes with indented pupils and an extremely large nose. It has short grooved hair and long straight sidelocks, with sunken, creased cheeks. The full lips are parted in a downturned grimace, exposing 2 rows of unevenly spaced teeth. A long, thin mustache merges into his pointed, grooved beard, which extends outward to form a finger grip. The neck curves at the back and extends into a long, uneven, cylindrical shaft. The gnarls are smoothed but it retains the appearance of a tree branch. There is a narrow black metal iron band around the upper shaft. The heel has a cast iron cap with a protruding, flat, triangular point as the ferrule. The handle shows signs of frequent wear.
    Dimensions
    overall: Height: 36.000 inches (91.44 cm) | Width: 1.250 inches (3.175 cm) | Depth: 3.500 inches (8.89 cm)
    Materials
    overall : wood, cast iron, metal, varnish stain

    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​/irn537156

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