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Crook handled staff with a carved Jewish head with bulging eyes

Object | Accession Number: 2016.184.67

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    Crook handled staff with a carved Jewish head with bulging eyes

    Overview

    Brief Narrative
    Crook handled walking stick with an intricately carved head of a Jewish man with bulging eyes, and a patterned, segmented shaft giving it a snakelike appearance. 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: Austria or 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 wooden walking stick with a crook handle carved in the shape of a man’s head with grotesque, serpentine features. It has thick etched eyebrows and a wavy sidelock in front of each large ear. The large eyes have grooved, spiral pupils and bulge out between swollen lids above an overlarge nose with a pointed tip. A thin, ridged mustache droops down from the nostrils to the chin. There are 2 huge, protruding disk shaped lips above a short, tufted beard. The shaft slopes outward and down from the back of the head. There is a carved sheath with a pattern of overlapping circles. The crook is attached to a thick cylindrical wooden shaft with raised bands at ca. 6 inch intervals so that the shaft resembles bamboo. On both sides of each segment band is an incised circle at the top end of a long, tooled groove. Rings of close, evenly spaced lines are incised along the shaft. The bands are very worn.
    Dimensions
    overall: Height: 35.375 inches (89.853 cm) | Width: 2.125 inches (5.398 cm) | Depth: 5.750 inches (14.605 cm)
    Materials
    overall : wood

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    The cane 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​/irn537169

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