Lot 52
The Western Wall – Embroidered Appliqué – Shmuel Ben David
People praying by the Western Wall – appliqué (wall-drape made by connecting various fabrics, with embroidery) made by Shmuel Ben-David.
The appliqué portrays figures praying in the narrow alley before the Western Wall: a mother with her children, the mother's face resting on the Wall; a man wearing a golden cape raising his face to the Heavens; a man wearing an orange cape bowing and other figures close to the Wall or sitting around the square. The floor stones and the vegetation on the Western Wall are stressed, portrayed as if melting and dripping down like the tears of those who are praying (in the lower left corner, the plants are actually seen dropping to the floor); embroidered at the bottom is the verse " put thou my tears into thy bottle" (Psalms 56, 9).
On the frame bordering the praying figures and the tears are large fowl (apparently, peacocks) spreading their wings and bowing their necks. On their large tails are Kiddush goblets which symbolize metaphoric bottles, into each drips a tear from the eye of the bird.
Shmuel Ben-David was born in 1884 in Sofia, Bulgaria as Shmuel Davidov. In his adult years, he was accepted to the Art Academy in Sofia, where in 1903-1905 he studied under Professor Boris Shatz and specialized in weaving carpets and preparing patterns for designing carpets. At the end of December 1905, Ben-David arrived in Eretz Israel together with Boris Shatz and studied in the highest class in the first grade at Bezalel. From 1907, he dealt with organizing Bezalel's Department of Carpets, taught there and later taught perspective, sketching and crafts. Ben-David was one of the founders of the Hebrew Artists Association and was its chairman. Died in Jerusalem in 1927 at the young age of 42. Ben-David was one of the senior teachers at Bezalel. Taught Nachum Gutman, Haim Gliksberg, Moshe Castel, Avigdor Stematsky and many others and was a significant contributor to the Bezalel Design Language [for more information about Shmuel Ben-David (and other applications he made), see Kedem catalog no. 21, pp. 111-116].
An application very similar to this, also made by Shmuel Ben-David, was exhibited in the exhibition "Bezalel by Schatz, 1906-1929" at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem at the end of 1982. The scene presented in that application is only mildly different from this application and the inscription and frame are different (there the inscription is: The Western Wall" and the frame has no embroidery).
See: Bezalel by Schatz, 1906-1929, exhibition catalogue (Jerusalem, 1982), Item 63 (page 16) and see photograph at the colored plates at the beginning of the first volume of the catalogue.
Height: 127 cm, width: 84 cm. Good condition. Several stains. Placed in wooden frame 86X129 cm.
