Page 86 - Bonhams Passkon and Philanthropy MET Mjuseum March 2024 Asia Week

Commander Theodor Peder Amundsom Ring
Photo taken between 1909 and 1913
Photo courtesy of Annie Kühner

Commander Theodor Peder Amundson Ring (1866-1932)

Lots 47 - 51

Theodor Peder Amundsen Ring (1866-1932) was born in Solor, in Durban, South Africa. A further 235 pieces of Bencharong
Norway, trained at the Naval Academy in Horten, and graduated in were sent to the Art Institute of Chicago in November 1922, to
1887 as a Second Lieutenant. He then went to sea for ten years, be exhibited in celebration of the opening of a new wing at the
moving to Asia to work with the Chinese Customs Bureau. In 1897 Museum for Asian art; thirty pieces from that loan were purchased
he joined the Royal Siamese Navy, one of sixteen Norwegians to by the Art Institute the following year.
do so, the result of King Chulalongkorn’s effort to hire Western
advisors to avoid the colonization fate of his neighboring Theodor Ring moved to Penang in 1913 and resided there until
countries. Commander Ring began to build what would become 1921. He died in Oslo in 1932.
one of the largest Western collections of Bencharong wares
in that era. In 1904, he returned to Oslo, where he was able to Sources: https://www.artic.edu/articles/1076/an-early-collection-
place part of his collection in local museums. He offered a group of-bencharong-porcelain https://thesiamsociety.org/activity/the-
to The Metropolitan Museum in 1905, and a selection of pieces ring-collection-of-bencharong-in-chicago/
was purchased by The Met in 1909, while Commander Ring was

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