By Nona Martin Stuck
Photos By Steve Mann
In his downtown Asheville shop, Gary Kramer spends his workday surrounded by collections: vividly illustrated children’s books, bright stuffed animals and puppets, fancifully decorated puzzles and games and wooden blocks. And the people to whom he sells these colorful wonders are often young collectors themselves, searching the shelves of the Enviro Depot Toy Store for what they know will be just the right addition to their growing assortment of Ugly Dolls, or Bonz sets or Karito Kids.
What they might not know is that the man who is helping them with their selection is a collector in his own right, and has been for 30 years. Gary collects menorahs, the nine-branch candelabrum that is ceremonially lighted each year during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.
The holiday, which is also known as the Festival of Lights, commemorates the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and the miracle of the oil in that temple menorah lasting for eight days, when there seemed only enough for one. According to tradition, a new candle is lit on each of the eight days of Hanukkah using the shamash or "servant" candle in the center of the menorah.
It’s a tradition that has been with Gary throughout his life. Born in Brooklyn, raised in New Jersey and living for a time in Miami before settling in Asheville in 1993, he briefly explored the world of collecting as a child when he collected stamps, and often admired the assemblage of religious art belonging to an uncle.
Gary’s own collection began when he was 25 years old and just out of the army. His parents gave him the first of what would become an assembly of more than 200 of the nine-branch candelabra. This initial piece, relatively small and simple, crafted of silver and gold, remains one of his favorites.
The Kramer home in the Grove Park neighborhood is comfortable and spacious. Perched, almost hidden, on a wooded hill above the street, it is multi level and abundantly windowed. Many of the interior horizontal surfaces and much of the wall space is devoted to art, paintings, sculpture and, of course, menorahs.
As with most of the secular art, a number of the menorahs were bought directly from the artist. Gary, who was for a time in the scrap metal business in Miami, is particularly fond of two of these, both painted, recycled metal renderings of the Manhattan skyline, crafted by North Carolina artist Lana Garner. Another, fashioned from steel, with a clean, black linear base supporting elegant cone-shaped cups, was created by Asheville area blacksmith Paige Davis. Gary became familiar with her work when it was included in an exhibit of Jewish art at the Asheville Museum of Art more than a decade ago.
Yet another metal work with an interesting history is a musical menorah, which he found in a scrap yard while walking along the Miami waterfront. The glistening surface caught his eye and he dug it from the pile of refuse in which it was embedded.
Of the ceramic menorahs, Gary favors an engaging figure depicting Moses in a long textured robe, head tilted back, a smile on his face, the cups arranged along the length of his outstretched arms. This one was bought from a potter in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Another of the clay pieces, this from Asheville artist, Delia Lytle, has a rugged gray base with the cups fashioned into small painted faces. A circular menorah—a clay crown—was made by Maggie Valley artist Dennis Pitter, or as he is better known, Pitter the Potter.
Cleverly positioned atop the family piano is one of the more fanciful works of the collection, a cheerfully colored scene of a family enjoying their own musical event, one man playing a piano, another, a violin, with the women and children gathered on a flowered sofa, their heads thrown back, mouths opened wide in song. The cups arranged along the front of the piece are decorated with the Hebrew letters found on the dreidel, the four-sided top used in a popular game played during the holidays.
Several of Gary’s menorahs are foreign creations. One, of which he is especially proud, is from Israel and was given to him by the members of a youth group he directed at the Jewish Community Center of Asheville. There are also a number of older pieces, and Gary feels it is very important to obtain the histories of these whenever possible. Not only does this add to the interest of the work, it also helps to assure him that the Nazis did not loot the menorah during World War II.
While the menorahs in the Kramer house are displayed as valued art, which they are, there is certainly no "hands-off" policy in place. One of the most eagerly anticipated rituals of Hanukkah for Gary and his children, an 11-year-old son and 9-year-old twin daughters, is the lighting of the menorah candles. In the Kramer home, each child selects one menorah from the collection each night and lights the appropriate candles. Doing the math, one can imagine the cumulative brilliance of 18 candles multiplied by eight nights—a Festival of Lights indeed.
