Page 37 - November 2016 London Bonhams asian Art

PROPERTY FROM THE H. G. BEASLEY COLLECTION

LOTS 52-57

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 worldwide –
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.

52 * Y Ф

AN IVORY FIGURE OF ZHONGLI QUAN
17th century
The tusk section finely carved as one of the Eight Daoist Immortals,
wearing long robes and holding a fan in his right hand, the left hand
held aloft, the bearded face serene, with a scholar’s cap upon the
head, mounted on a wood stand.
29.8cm (11 3/4in) high

£1,000 - 1,500
CNY8,600 - 13,000 HK$10,000 - 15,000

Provenance
Harry Geoffrey Beasley (1881-1939), collection no.1008, and thence
by descent.

Similarly carved figures are illustrated in Chinese Ivories from the Kwan
Collection, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1990, p.142, pl. 47;
and in Chinese Ivories from the Shang to the Qing, Oriental Ceramic
Society, 1984, pl. 90.

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