Year-round Ashkenazic rite siddur. Venice: Bragadin, "Printed upon the desire of the fine young man Gad son of the wealthy R. Shmuel Fua", 1749. Silver, cut, repoussé, and engraved; silver, cast and pierced (unmarked); print and engraving on paper. Uncommon siddur, beginning with unique engraving, in original leather binding dating from time of printing, and enclosed in elegant 18th-century silver binding. Front and back of silver binding with identical symmetrical design: at center, a large convex oval medallion encircled by a beaded necklace-like pattern; background surface filled with hatched pattern; above the medallion, a ribbon-like ornament; below, a pair of branches with leaves and flowers. Four corner ornaments in shape of sprays of flowers, with their leaves extending outward from the corners of the rectangular frame. Spine adorned with four large repeated flowerheads. Pair of buckles similarly adorned with flowerheads. Pair of silver ornaments, spanning width of book, soldered onto top and bottom of spine. An exquisite frontispiece engraving appears at the beginning of the siddur. It illustrates the three mitzvot pertaining to women: "challah" (kneaded dough offering), "niddah" (menstrual purity), and lighting the Sabbath lights. All human figures in the engraving are portrayed in contemporary dress. The siddur also includes “a prayer for the sick customary of the societies of the Ashkenazi community of Venice” (pp. 293b-294a), and “Tefillat Yesharim – for each day of the seven days of the week… composed by R. Yehudah Aryeh of Modena” (leaves 296-300). The final leaves contain a table of contents; approbations in Italian and in Hebrew by the rabbis of Venice; and a list of books available for sale by Yitzchak Fua and Shlomo son of Moshe David Ashkenazi.
Siddur: [1] engraving; 315, [3] leaves., 18.3 cm. Good condition. Minor stains, mostly to first and last leaves. Creases to flyleaves. Last leaves protrude somewhat, with minor creases to edges. Front flyleaf partly detached. Binding: 19.4 cm. Good condition. Original leather binding, partly detached.
