Susannah and Matt
Date 5 Sivan 5772
Description
The artist seemed to have been unsually lucky the last years in receiving commissions for such complicated and highly detailed ketubot. This newest hails from Washington, DC and is most unusual from the normal stream in that the couple travel widely throughout the world and wanted many of their favorite decorative elements from across the globe, in particular, the North American Indian.
As you can see, Norman's talents successfully combined so many various designs into one beautiful document the couple will treasure and proudly display in their home.
In this detail, you can see the star constellation of Gemini, the constellation which will be predominant in the skies on the day of their wedding and, in the 3rd detail below, the moon will be a crescent.
The topmost horizontal panel shows various of the North American indian designs
Noah's ark (on the left), the rainbow, two jumping white sharks and, because of all the couple's worldwide travels, a few dancers in native costumes on the far right were elements that the bride specifically asked for.
The artist almost always insists on including some kind of Jerusalem landscape and, in this particular rendition, Norman knew from the emails while developing the artwork, that the couple were marrying on the night of a 35% crescent moon and, always trying to include things very personal to the couple, put a crescent moon shining down over Jerusalem.
The fact that the young couple wanted more and more leaves, directed the artist to have the vines encircle the inner circle for the text.
Susannah and Matt were quite happy to have the traditional Levantine Hamsa to replace one of the Indian hands that they had originally chosen.
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Most unusual as well was the exchange of a griffon for the Lion of Judah.
The design below against the yellow background is from an embroidered piece of tapestry from one of the Indian tribes.
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