Page 164 - Bonhams Chinese Art NYC Nov 9 2017

H.G. Beasley

HARRY GEOFFREY BEASLEY
(1881 - 1939)

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
World War 2 and in accordance with Beasley’s will his widow,
Irene M Beasley (q.v), 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.
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