The quest for lost gems

3 December 2009

Mystery American millionaire holds the key to a worldwide 'treasure hunt' of valuable masterpieces

In the 18th century, the 4th Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim Palace owned the largest gem collection in Britain. Unfortunately, in 1899 the whole collection of around 800 pieces was dispersed at sale and scattered around the world.

Now members of Oxford University's Beazley Archive have published the results of their quest to track down the gem collection in The Marlborough Gems by Sir John Boardman, published by OUP. Sir John, Emeritus Lincoln Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology, and his team, in Oxford, London and Germany, have found 250 of the tiny masterpieces but still hope to track down the rest.

However the key to the mystery of the whereabouts of many of the remaining gems could lie with the mysterious American millionaire who in 1920 bought from a dealer in London some three hundred gems that had once been in the Marlborough Collection.

The Beazley Archive, under the direction of Professor Donna Kurtz, Beazley Archivist and University Reader in Archaeology (Classical), was created from the original archive of Sir John Beazley, Lincoln Professor from 1925 until 1956, which was purchased for the Faculty of Classics in 1965. Within a few years of his death in 1970, his personal archive of material relating to the study of classical archaeology and art was transformed into a research resource for students and scholars. Amongst this collection were the casts of all of the gems in the Marlborough Collection, giving researchers the physical evidence for what they are seeking.

The gems are hard semi-precious stones which have been cut with intaglio figures and designs so that they can be set, usually in finger rings, and used as seals if pressed into sealing wax or clay. There are also the more familiar cameos, which are much the same thing but with the figures cut in relief on layered stones, usually so that they appear light on a dark background. Many are no more than one inch in length, with a few as big as two or three inches.

John Boardman said: 'We have the clue to what the collection looked like from the casts we have in the archive, but it's hard to understand them properly until you see a photograph. Who this millionaire was is a mystery that we would love to solve, and someone somewhere must know his name and where these gems may be."

The dealer, Mosheh Oved, wrote in his memoir about his dealings with 'the American' who he also called 'Superman', but he never named him. In 1920 he had bought a box of 300 rings set with gems, most of which were from the Marlborough Collection. The next day an American came into his shop 'dressed in a dirty black straw hat' and bought the whole box.

Four years later he returned and admitted that the items were still unpacked in his cellar as he had lost interest. But he continued regularly to buy from Oved revealing details about himself, such as that he had started at 30 as a newspaper seller, but was now director of 100 companies and 'helped Europe'. He had addresses in San Francisco and Switzerland, stocks in Canada and an interest in Florida oil. He learned languages, was a vegetarian and a health-freak and rented a luxurious house in London.

Yet no name was mentioned and no one has discovered who he was and where the gems are now - despite the photograph of himself which he sent Oved.

John Boardman said: "This is a very open-ended search and likely to remain so for a long time. The task has been not only to study and describe the gems, many of them ancient, and going back to the Renaissance collection of the Gonzaga Dukes of Mantua, as well as later sources, but to try to find out where they are now. Only 250 have been located so far, worldwide, but more are being found month by month and there are many more out there still to be identified and published."

One of the latest gems to have been recognised was owned by Yves St Laurent and sold in Paris for 97,000 Euros, and a cameo of a dog that was published on-line by the Beazley Archive was googled by its owner and, as a result, rediscovered. Once the gems are found, they are photographed for publication by the Beazley archive.

The research project has been published with the help of the British Academy and Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, and research covers where the gems came from before the Duke of Marlborough owned them, as well as where they are now. There is more to the work than finding the gems, although both Professor Kurtz and Sir John admit they would love to see more of the gems discovered.

Professor Kurtz said: "The history of collections is a traditional subject of research at Oxford, unbroken in the past 100 years. As well as searching for the gems, this is an object study and an art historical study, particularly in gem and cameo engraving. It's a subject people find interesting - how did this object get there and where has it come from? We look at the bigger picture. Through this project we are making it more accessible to the world."

Sir John said: "I get very excited when a new identification is made. Generally people make identifications from what they see on our website, but we would go anywhere to study and photograph them. Maybe one day the whole collection will be accounted for."

For more information and photographs or to interview Sir John Boardman, contact The University of Oxford Press Office on press.office@admin.ox.ac.uk or 01865 280528