The British Museum

Baron Ferdinand Rothschild (1839-98).

As a child he delighted in handling his father's (Baron Anselm's) collection of works of art, but had little interest in the family banking business, and in 1860 he moved to England. In 1865 he married, but after his wife's death following a railway accident he turned to charitable and public work. In 1874 he inherited his father's collection, which he was to treble in size, and embarked on a lifetime project--the construction and furnishing of a fine house at Waddesdon.

The British Museum

Holy Thorn reliquary.

To the British Museum, of which he was a Trustee, he bequeathed the contents of the new Smoking Room of the Bachelors' Wing at Waddesdon. This consisted of almost 300 pieces of jewellery, plate, enamel, carvings, glass and maiolica, in the tradition of a schatzkammer or treasure house such as those formed by the Renaissance princes of Europe. Most items date from the Renaissance but there are a number of older pieces. One of the finest individual objects is the gold enamelled and gem studded reliquary of the Holy Thorn made in Paris c.1405-10 for Jean, Duc de Berry.

Baron Ferdinand's will was most specific--the collection should be 'placed in a special room to be called the Waddesdon Bequest Room separate and apart from the other contents of the Museum and thenceforth for ever thereafter [the Museum should] keep the same in such room or in some other room to be substituted for it'. Failure to observe the terms of the bequest would make it void.

The British Museum

Courtney Ilbert (1888-1957).

I have included Courtney Ilbert (1888-1957) as an example of an exceptionally focused collector. Like many collectors he began as a child. After a career as a civil engineer he retired in the early 1930s and began to collect in earnest, his aim being to form a collection which would represent all makers and every evolution in clock movements. In his obituary it is noted that:

He delighted in buying unusual and complicated clocks and watches.... The collection was not formed with a view to decorative interest or purely as investment, a 'gaudy' watch or fine example of 17th century clock being included only on account of an underlying horological interest. He took the best and most unusual examples from many important past collections.

during the next quarter of a century, with the exception of the war years, horology was his whole life; purchases were continuous, both at auctions...and from dealers and executors.

After Ilbert's death in 1957 the collection was put up for auction at Christies by his heirs. A donor, Gilbert Edgar, bought the clocks for the British Musuem collection and also contributed toward the purchase of the watches.

This collection typifies innumerable private collections, which have transformed the Museum's holdings by strengthening weak areas and sometimes nudging the British Musuem in new directions. It consists of 207 European clocks, 70 Japanese clocks, 38 chronometers, 968 antique watches, 62 modern watches, 741 watch movements, 7 Japanese watches and a number of engravings, dials, hour-glasses, watch-paper, watch-keys and other miscellanea. Its quality was summarised at the time:

The collections of the British Museum, as a result of the Ilbert acquisition, now rank as the finest in the world for the study of horology. There are, indeed, more monumental, splendid, fanciful or elaborate clocks to be seen elsewhere, mostly conventional as to their movements and conceived primarily in terms of furniture or interior decoration. But for the solid business of reconstructing the detailed history of the development of time-keeping, the British Museum collections, a great concentration of shrewdly selected material, are unrivalled.

Mrs Anne Hull Grundy's (d.1984) remark, 'If you don't fall in love, don't buy it', contrasts with the attitude of the collector as investor.

There are eccentric collectors but the collecting passion does not necessarily lead to eccentricity. Mrs Hull Grundy was, however, decidedly odd. She was born in Germany, of a banking family and came to England as a child. She is another collector who cites family influence, declaring in an interview: 'There had been antiques in my family since the fourteenth century and Mummy and Daddy collected... I suppose you could say it was in the blood'. She began collecting as a child but at the age of 21 she retreated to her bed 'victim of a mysterious disease which nobody was ever able to define'.

Bedridden, she described herself as 'a large spider sitting at the centre of a web of dealers, salesrooms and museums' and indicated, usually in rather blunt terms, that one of her greatest pleasures lay in outwitting dealers. When asked why she collected, she would often reply enigmatically 'to leave the world a better place'.

One dealer describes a visit:

I was shown almost immediately into Mrs Grundy's bedroom which was occupied by a bed of truly heroic proportions and from the centre of the eiderdowns and furs I heard the familiar slim voice and rasping criticisms. Almost entirely obscured by bed clothes I could see a very large woman, wearing a balaclava and mittens, who was flanked by cases containing the netsuke collection, and well over a thousand antique jewels were concealed in mahogany cabinets with shallow drawers...

The French windows onto the garden were open and pigeons flew freely to and from Mrs Grundy's bedpost and the dovecot, attracted by the grain she threw for them...

A pile of 50 or so none too fresh pineapples gave off a heady scent from the corner of the room and wasps directed by this effluvia occasionally pinged the blades of the four huge fans which surrounded her bed and their shattered bodies lay on the surface of the eiderdown. Mrs Grundy grew sleepy on the effects of fried bananas and miniature bottles of champagne...

The British Museum

'Garden' of jewelry.

Mrs Hull Grundy could be fearsome to deal with. It is noted that:

If the museum directors seemed less than prompt in thanking her for her gifts, then a barrage of telegrams would be sent containing overt threats of legal proceedings and even mutilation.