The Spice Box of Earth
around 1960
ink on cardboard
Leonard Cohen archives, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto
This work is a drawing on a piece of sand brown cardboard slightly smaller than letter paper size. The cardboard is the everyday corrugated sort that would make up a cardboard box and the drawing is presumed to be made by a black ball point pen.
Written in three lines and in all capital letters, The text “SPICE BOX” “OF” and “EARTH” takes up the centre of the cardboard. On the right hand side is a two dimensional drawing of a traditional Jewish Besamim container, also known as a spice box or spice tower. The spice box is drawn as a triangle on top of a square. Its base is three long thin tripod-like legs protruding from the bottom. At the very top of the spice box is a little pointed flag bearing three Hebrew letters, right to left, Kaf He Nun-Sofit. The triangle top of the spice box has its scaly texture indicated by row upon row of backwards letter C‘s . The body of the box is filled with fine looping doodles that resemble the curved metal of a filigree pattern. Along the bottom there are three rows of the scale pattern which continues on the tripod legs which travel straight down and then curve out quite close to their base.
The cardboard has a few grease stains in the centre and a few dabs of dirt near the bottom. On the top left corner written in pencil is the word box and the roman numeral for 3 which is three straight vertical lines.
The book “Spice Box of Earth” is on display in a case nearby. Also displayed on the same wall as this work is a typical Cohen doodle and a poem on the back of a napkin. A floor to ceiling reproduction of a black and white photograph of a young Cohen sitting at his writing desk in his creative space in Hydra, Greece is affixed to this wall at the far left.
Exhibition label text:
Published in 1961, Spice-Box of Earth was the most popular and commercially successful of Cohen’s early books, and established his reputation as a leading poet in Canada. Its title draws from the ceremonial object— usually made of silver and decorated with elaborate filigree—used in the Havdalah (“separation” in Hebrew) ritual that marks the end of the Jewish Sabbath on Saturday evening. Cohen’s poem “Out of the Land of Heaven” celebrates the joy and sacredness of the Sabbath and the role of the spice box in it. This distinctive sketch made by Cohen, drawn in ink on a scrap of cardboard, includes his family name—Kohen— written in Hebrew in the flag attached to the finial.