Silver Spice Container Owned by Jeudah Senior of Curaçao-Venezuela – The Caribbean Islands, Mid-19th Century

Silver Spice Container Owned by Jeudah Senior of Curaçao-Venezuela – The Caribbean Islands, Mid-19th Century
Silver container owned by Jeudah Senior of Curaçao, used as spice container (for Havdalah). Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 1858; inscription from 5619 (1858/1859).
Silver (marked, Dutch hallmarks; maker: J. Even); cast, repoussé and engraved.
Fine silver container designed as a goblet with a hinged lid. Octagonal base supporting an octagonal pear-shaped body, engraved with delicate foliate and floral designs. Dome-shaped, hinged lid which opens with a button, topped with a spherical finial.
Lid engraved with the name of the owner – Jeuda Senior, and the year, 5619 (1858/1859).
Jeudah (Yehuda) Senior (1817-1896), native of the island of Curaçao, was a fourth-generation descendant of Jewish settlers in the Caribbean Islands. In 1838, he left Curaçao and joined the small Jewish community in Coro, Venezuela, where he settled down, went into commerce and became an accomplished and prosperous businessman. Senior was a prominent figure in the Coro Jewish community, yet in 1855, he returned with his family to Curaçao. There, he joined the board of the Mikveh Israel synagogue and was active in the community, which was the mother-community of all the Jewish communities in the Caribbean Islands (the Jewish community was founded in 1651, shortly after the Dutch captured Curaçao from the Spanish, and it was comprised primarily of Portuguese and Spanish Jews from Amsterdam).
The Senior family was renowned as a family of traders and businessmen, who came to Amsterdam in 1598 and were amongst the first Jewish families of Spanish-Portuguese descent to settle there. They later immigrated to Venezuela. The Senior family is also closely connected to the Coro synagogue (now known as Casa de Oración Hebrea), which is considered one of the most ancient synagogues in Latin America: the house used as synagogue was purchased in 1847 by David Avraham Senior.
Height: 16.5 cm.
For an example of a spice container from Curaçao, see "Guidebook: the historic synagogue of the United Netherlands Portuguese Congregation 'Mikve Israel-Emanuel' of Curaçao", pp. 16-17 (no other spice containers from Curaçao are known).
For further information about Jeudah Senior and the Jewish communities of Curaçao and Coro, see: Josette C. Goldish, "Once Jews: Stories of Caribbean Sephardim." Princeton, 2009, pp. 64-79.