Besamim Spice Box
Repair & Restoration
A spice tower (or besamim) in used during Havdalah, a Jewish ritual that marks the end of Shabbat. It is often filled with spices. Many of the shapes are strongly influenced by what looks like European Medieval towers, often with flags and small pleasant sounding bells (which are otten lost over the years. There are no replacement parts. Everything I do is custom work.
There is no prescription for the shapes of Besamim so they can be quite inventive.
Below are a few examples of Besamim that I have repaired or restored.
Russian Silver Besamim Spice Box before and after restoration
This Russian Silver Besamim Spice box arrived with many repair problems. The base was bent and cracking. It was also missing two bells with one replacement in brass that did not match at all. None of the bell had clappers.
There are no bell replacement parts for Judaica. The new bells were spun to be as close as possible to the same shape as the original bells. This required a custom made form so that it could match the original bells from 150 years ago. Five clappers had to be made so that they had good movement inside the bells to create a delightful sound.
The crack in the base was repaired with additional reinforcement under the base so that the base was stronger.
After all the restoration work, the spice box was polished which in itself was a significant undertaking. Russian silver alloy .875 has more copper and creates a tough skin when it tarnishes. Polishing alone took me hours.
This spice box was stamped with a Russian hallmark 84 in s square and maker’s mark OC 1879 for Josef Sosnkowski Warsaw. (shown below.)
Antique Judaica often has small bells to create a delightful sound when the object is used. Sadly, they are often lost. This antique Russian spice box arrived with mismatched bells including one in brass, and another missing. This is shown in the next image. To restore this Besamim, I needed to make two bells. Shown below, you can see that many bells were spun to get two good bells. It takes many mistakes to get the best results.
Small clappers were custom made to fit inside every bell. This also took several efforts to get the clappers to move nicely inside the bell to make the appropriate tingling sound. You can see the clapper in progress in the next image.
Old Judaica often has mismatched parts, There was one silver bell that did not match the others so I put it inside the tower. I always reuse all the old parts best possible. Perfection in restoring old Judaica is not the goal, I take a very conservative approach to my restoration decisions.
FILGREE SILVER bESAMIM sPICE BOX
This silver filigree Besamim Spice box has a very delicate construction of fine silver wires. It arrived with a bent and broken structure. Silver soldering on such a delicate structure would be extremely high risk with a torch. Using my state of the art TIG welder, I could repair the delicate filigree and wire at 10 X magnification.
STerling silver Besamim Spice Box
This sterling silver Besamim spice box in the shape of a flower arrived with a leaf broken off which meant it fell over to the side. For this example of Judaica, the attractive leaves on the side provided stability. Fortunately, I was able to repair the leaf adding an attractive patch on the back for additional strength. This flower shape for a Besamim seems like an appropriate metaphor since spice boxes are supposed to be about scent.