Footnotes

十七/十八世紀 犀角雕瑞獸四足杯

Provenance:
Harry G. Beasley (1881-1939), acquired on 18 October 1918 (label)
An important European private collection

來源：
哈利·比斯利（1881-1939），獲藏於1918年10月18日（標籤）
重要歐洲私人收藏

Harry Geoffrey Beasley was a wealthy brewery owner whose private collecting passion began when, aged 13, he bought two Solomon Island clubs. In 1914 he was elected to the Royal Anthropological Institute with which he maintained an association until 1937. He and his wife, Irene, established the Cranmore Ethnographic Museum in Chislehurst, Kent where they had moved in 1928, compiling the Cranmore Index of Pacific Material Culture based on James Edge-Partington's Index for the British Museum and forming a considerable library. Although the Beasleys collected artefacts from all around the world – including Africa (particularly Benin), North-west America and Asia - their main focus was the Pacific. Objects were acquired from dealers, missionaries and from, or in exchanges with, various museums. Beasley's comprehensive monograph on Oceanic fish-hooks was published in 1928. The Cranmore Museum was damaged by bombing in the Second World War and in accordance with Beasley's will his widow, Irene, offered the first selection of the collection (apart from a limited reservation for herself) as a donation to the British Museum. The gift of several thousand items became fully effective in 1944. Other named beneficiaries include the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford; The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge; and National Museums, Scotland.

This exquisitely carved rhinoceros horn pouring vessel is exceptionally rare in form and design and no other similar example would appear to have been published.

Compare, however, a related rhinoceros horn bird-shaped pouring vessel, 17th century, with the beak forming the spout, in the Harvard University Art Museums, illustrated by T.Fok, Connoisseurship of Rhinoceros Horn Carving in China, Hong Kong, 1999, pl.174. See also a related rhinoceros horn four-legged pouring vessel, 17th/18th century, but without a hollowed spout, formerly in the Robert H. Blumenfield collection, which was sold at Christie's New York, 25 March 2010, lot 882.

哈利·比斯利先生從13歲即熱衷收藏。1914年他被榮選為皇家人類學學院研究員並在此從事研究直至1937年。他與妻子艾琳於1928年在英國肯特郡創辦了克萊默人類學博物館，並基於人類學家詹姆斯的研究成功編制出《克萊默氏太平洋物質文明大索引》，並成為大英博物館圖書館中重要索引之一。雖然比斯利夫婦的足跡遍及非洲、美洲西南部以及亞洲，但太平洋沿岸的物質文明始終是他們興趣所好。他們經常與古董商、傳教士以及博物館購買或交換藏品。他有關古代海洋漁具的專著曾於1928年發表。二戰後，克萊默博物館不幸被毀，艾琳尊其丈夫遺囑將一部分藏品捐獻給了大英博物館，近千件藏品最終於1944年公之於眾。受其捐贈的博物館還包括牛津皮特河博物館，劍橋大學考古及人類學博物館以及蘇格蘭國家博物館等。

此杯造型渾厚可愛，頗具巧思，刀法質樸簡練，目前未見同類者著錄，極為稀有。類似採用瑞獸或動物口部作流的例子，見哈佛大學博物館藏十七世紀鳥紋杯一例，著錄於霍滿堂，《中國犀角雕刻珍賞》，香港，1999年，圖174。另見採用四足為底的十七/十八世紀犀角杯，為美國收藏家普孟斐舊藏，後售於紐約佳士得，2010年3月25日，拍品882。