History and Culture

Malke Vosk’s Handmade Wedding Gown and Fascinator

February 14, 2023

by Tanya Elder

It’s February and love is in the air!

The AJHS Museum Collection has several textiles of extremely fragile material, including the wedding gown of English lass, Malke Vosk, who married Scotsman David Goldberg in Leeds, England in 1936. This dress was handsewn by Malke and made of spiderweb lace with satin bows and satin underslip.

Malke Vosk’s Handsewn Wedding Gown and Heart-Shaped Fascinator. AJHS Museum Collection, Accession number 2002.001.001a-d

AJHS normally does not take textiles into the collection, and it is odd that this dress was made and used in England as we normally only collect American Jewish memorabilia. The gown and fascinator were donated by a former AJHS staff member, Rachel Chodorov, in 1993 but officially accessioned in 2002. In this small and beautiful collection, we are lucky to have not only the dress, but a digital photograph of the wedding party which shows Malke wearing her labor of love with her family in a wedding party photograph. It is a rarity in the AJHS collection.

The heart-shaped fascinator was displayed in the American Jewish Historical Society Treasures Exhibit in 2017.

Pictured l to r: Isadore Vosk (Malke’s brother), Annie Vosk, groom David Goldberg, bride Malke, her parents Fagel and Jacob, and two children, Blanche Vosk and an unnamed boy. Leeds, England, 1936

Tanya Elder

Tanya Elder studied Experimental Theatre, History and Archival Management at New York University and Library Science at Wayne State University. She was a children’s librarian at the Philadelphia Free Library and the Queens Public Library; she worked as an Archives Assistant at the NYU University Archives; and as a project archivist at the Brooklyn Historical Society, the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives (New York City Council, 1898-1998), and the Stephen Wise Synagogue. She was archivist at the Riverside Church in New York City, and researcher for ABC’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? As an NHPRC archivist at the Center for Jewish History, she re-processed the Raphael Lemkin papers, a lawyer who developed the theory of genocide, and wrote on the known American archives of Lemkin entitled, “’What you see before your eyes’: documenting Raphael Lemkin’s life by exploring his archival Papers, 1900–1959,” for the Journal of Genocide Research. She also published the essays “Hip v. Nice v. Nasty. v. Traditional v. Aaarrgghhh” and “What Do I Have to Be,” for two compilations of In Our Own Voices: The Changing Face of Librarianship. She is currently the Senior Archivist of the American Jewish Historical Society.