u/dreadful_fright

This year, for the first time in my life I think, I purchased a top-tier lulav and etrog set. I know, it’s a weird flex. YOLO.

It was $249 $199 and included a “deri lulav” (a swoll Israeli date palm lulav) and a top grade Moroccan etrog with pitom.

It’s a lovely etrog. The most beautiful etrog I’ve ever seen in person, much less owned. As far as I can tell it passes every standard for an אאא-grade Moroccan etrog, with the exception of “absolutely perfect symmetry from every angle” which just seems impossible anyway. Most of the tapered area around the pitom is straight-line conical, one spot curves the tiniest bit. The girdle and the chartreuse color are very desirable among Sephardim. Don’t come @ me with Yanover beauty standards.

But what insanity is this price tag? What do numbers even mean?

Does this mean that they actually put it on the sales floor thinking there was a chance it would go for that much? And then when it didn’t sell in time they used it for online order fulfillment?

I’ve never lived in NYC or LA and haven’t been ba’aretz for Sukkot yet. So maybe this is some kind of normal in those places?

The price tag is a surreal little detail that keeps itching at my brain.

Filed under look at my sukkah because it’s Sukkot themed. Obligatory Sukkah picture included for the tax.

I couldn’t decide if my flair should be ‘Blazonry’ or ‘Identify.’ I’m asking for the blazonry in case it helps with the identification.

This ring was passed down to me from my grandfather and there’s some confusion within the family as to whose coat of arms is shown. More about the ring later.

The family are from Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), Germany. More about that later.

First, stating the obvious, the carving is reversed left to right so that a wax impression comes out correctly.

Starting with tinctures. Based on the horizontal hatching the field in 1st and 4th appears to be Azure. Maybe we can assume the field in 2nd and 3rd is Argent since they chose not to attempt any hatching but there seems to be room for it. There’s arguably room for hatching on the bend but I don’t think you could put a bend Argent on a field Argent. Obviously there’s no room for hatching on the charges.

As for the charges, the lion and the bend are obvious. I guess those are cinquefoils rather than mullets. The artist managed some pretty sharp details so if he’d wanted points I think he could have managed them. Maybe Germans didn’t use mullets anyway?

(Do Germans even use Norman French terms for blazonry? I mean, how international is blazonry, really? This jeweler at least seems to have followed a common convention for hatching.)

Then for the crest we have perhaps a little crown and… five peacock feathers?

So…

Quarterly, 1st and 4th Azure, a lion rampant [tincture of the lion] (possibly tinctures of the tongue and claws), 2nd and 3rd Argent, on a bend [tincture of the bend] three cinquefoils [tincture of the cinquefoils]
…and then I have no idea how to characterize that crest and mantle

More about the family. Our name is Bodensieck (standardized High German spelling) but originally it was Buddensieg (Low German). Through the centuries it has been spelled in every possible permutation of Budden/Boden + siek/sieg/sieck. We have a family tree (stammbaum) on waxed linen that’s roughly fifteen inches tall and several yards wide, in very small print blackletter (aka ‘Gothic font,’) going back to the 15th or 16th century, but it’s with my elderly mother, rolled up, probably in a box. At some point one of my ancestors was ennobled so for a while part of the family were “von Buddensieg.” The family tree is kind of wild in terms of all the different spellings. My branch of the family were living in Hameln prior to the turn of the 20th century when they emigrated to the USA. My great grandfather was an adolescent when they made the crossing. The ring came to me from my grandfather. My grandmother outlived my grandfather and said she DID NOT think the ring was a Bodensieck coat of arms but couldn’t remember what else it could be. (If we had other noble ancestors I don’t think my grandfather would have kept it to himself. He really enjoyed talking about family history.)

Searching the internet for “wappen Bodensieck” turned up the phrase “Bodensieck aus Rohden” (from Rohden.) Searching that I encountered the abstract of a document in a German state archive titled “Wappen Greß 651-692” which reads, in part, “Akten von Walterr Greß (mit Blasonierung der eingetragenen Wappen): 651 Haisch (Closter Reichenbach), 652 Bodensieck (Rohden)…” [Google translation: Files of Walter Greß (with blazoning of the registered coats of arms).] If I try to view the document I can see that it’s in the holdings of the “Landeskirchliches Archiv Stuttgart” but it hasn’t been scanned or transcribed. (My German is very rudimentary and I haven’t contacted them yet.) Rohden is a 20 minute drive from Hameln.

More about the ring (both because it may be relevant to identifying the crest and because you might be curious.): The stone is blue sardonyx. It is slightly translucent near the bottom. In person the carving looks darker and more lustrous rather then shiny. It was tricky to photograph. It’s set in rose gold. There’s a stamp on the inside, ‘333,’ which indicates it’s 333/1000ths pure gold (8 karat.) There are no other marks on the band.

Google says, “German jewelers began stamping gold jewelry in thousandths following the German Imperial Law of July 16, 1884, which established a minimum legal fineness and required purity standards to be indicated in thousandths (such as 585 for 14-karat gold). Uniform national marks like the sun and crown were fully implemented by 1888.” So the ring is probably late 19th century, unless they changed the setting.

That’s all the relevant information I could think of sharing. I figure it’s better to give it all at once rather than drawing it out with back and forth. But I’ll try to answer questions if I didn’t cover something.

I really appreciate you reading this far. Seriously, you rock for giving this your attention.