A provenance case
The Paper Trail
When this amphora came into the Drakopoulos Collection, its recorded history went back only to a collector who died in 1974. A 1926 sale catalogue on the library shelf goes further.
A guide talks you through each step, and there is more to hear when you want it. Everything spoken is also written on screen, and the Sound button turns the sound on or off at any time.
3 to 5 minutes.
Case notes
Research docket
- Object
- Amphora. Bichrome IV ware, Cypro-Archaic I, c. 750–600 BC. Two handles on the shoulder; a frieze of lotus flowers and buds.
- Collection
- Drakopoulos Collection, JAR-AR-002
- Height (2024 sale)
- 65 cm
Find this amphora in print. Record the sale, the date, the lot and the plate, then file the card.
The catalogue
Catalogue of Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Cypriot Antiquities, sold by Sotheby & Co. “at their large galleries, 34 & 35, New Bond Street”, London, on Thursday 11 November 1926 and the following day, “at one o’clock precisely”. The Cypriot pottery comes first, on the first day. The catalogue does not name the owner of the Cypriot collection. Twelve plates are bound in after the lot descriptions, one to a leaf, with the backs left blank.
How a sale reference is checked
- Plate and lot. The plate caption gives the lot number, and the lot entry names its plate, so picture and words lock together. Two pots on the same plate can share a shape and a height; only the decoration and the description separate them.
- The height. A height is the one measurable thing in a 1926 entry. Convert it (inches × 2.54) and compare it with the object.
- Words of 1926. The catalogue sold every lot “with all faults, imperfections and errors of description” (Condition V). Its “guilloche” is the cable band of the modern record, and “Kition fabric” is its attribution of the ware to Kition; the amphora is now classed as Bichrome IV ware.
- The buyer. Purchasers had “to give in their names and places of abode” (Condition IV). This copy has the printed list of buyers’ names bound in at the back.
Why provenance matters
What provenance means
Provenance is an object's ownership history: each owner, sale, gift and move since it left the ground, ideally with a date and a document for each.
Archaeologists use a second word, provenience, for the exact place where an object was found: the site, the tomb or room, and the layer of soil. An object can have a long provenance and no recorded provenience at all.
That is true of this amphora. The 1926 catalogue names no find-spot for it, and no other record says where it was dug up.
What the find-spot tells us
Excavators record where each object lay: which tomb or room, which layer of soil, and what lay beside it. That record helps to date the object and to explain how it was used.
A figurine found in a tomb may have been an offering for the dead; the same figurine in a sanctuary was probably a gift to a god or goddess. Plans, photographs and find registers keep this information, so later scholars can check the work.
What looting destroys
Looters dig for objects that will sell. They throw away what an archaeologist would record: bones, plain pottery, seeds and the layout of the tomb itself. Once a tomb has been emptied that way, what it could have told us is lost.
After 1974, churches, museums and archaeological sites in the occupied north of Cyprus were looted, and many objects were taken abroad. This Middle Bronze Age vessel in the shape of an animal was last recorded in Famagusta before 1974. In December 2023 it came up at an auction in Germany, described only as from the “Eastern Mediterranean region”. A London gallery bought it and, with the Department of Antiquities, returned it to Cyprus.
The law, and the 1970 line
Cyprus has had an antiquities law since 1905, and taking antiquities off the island has needed official permission ever since. From 1935 the Department of Antiquities issued export licences, and many objects left legally that way until an amendment of the law ended licences for private collections in 1996.
In 1970 a UNESCO convention asked countries to work together against the illicit trade in cultural property, and that year became a line. Major museums will generally acquire an antiquity only if it can be shown to have left its country of origin before 1970, or to have been exported legally after it.
A documented history is also good evidence that an object is genuine. A forger can copy the clay and the painting, but cannot easily invent a hundred years of sales and letters kept by other people.
- 1905 First Antiquities Law: export only with written permission
- 1935 New Antiquities Law: export licences from the Department of Antiquities
- 1970 UNESCO Convention against the illicit trade
- 1996 Amendment: no more export licences for private collections
Catalogues and old photographs
Sale catalogues are often the first place to look. They give a date, a lot number and a description, often a height and sometimes a photograph, and some library copies record who bought each lot.
Printed catalogues of private collections, old photographs, dealers' stock books, receipts and letters add more. A pot in a photograph can be matched to the object by its shape, its painting and the chips and repairs it has picked up.
Licences, seals and numbers
Official papers are the strongest links in a trail. An object exported legally from Cyprus may still have its export licence, or a small lead seal stamped C.M., for Cyprus Museum, tied on when the consignment was inspected for export.
The Department of Antiquities keeps copies of the old licences and can check a number. Finds from recorded excavations often carry site and tomb numbers that match the published reports, so an old number can lead back to the place where an object was found.
A gap in the record
When this amphora came into the collection, its record went back only to Edward Varley Kayley, who died in 1974. Before him there was nothing: no sale, no photograph, no letter.
A careful record says so, and leaves the gap open until a document fills it. Gaps are common, because papers are lost over a century. A trail that only begins after 1970, or covers a gap with a vague phrase such as “an old private collection”, is a reason to ask more questions.
The case you are about to open looks for an older document.
Provenance and provenienceExport licences, lead seals and labelsHow antiquities left Cyprus legallyLooting in the occupied north after 1974Own a Cypriot antiquity?
The answer (it gives the case away)
Lot 23, printed page 5:
A Diota, tapering oviform with broad shoulders, two handles on the body, decorated in red and black, on the body horizontal lines, on the shoulders a broad band of lotus flowers above a narrow band of guilloche, and beneath, line and diced ornament, on the neck winged diced lozenges front and back, and lotus flowers above the handles at the sides, 27 in. high; Kition fabric; c. 8th Cent. B.C. [Pl. III]
Provenance
Sotheby & Co., London, Catalogue of Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Cypriot Antiquities, 11–12 November 1926, lot 23, pl. III, as “Kition fabric; c. 8th Cent. B.C.”, H. 27 in. (68.6 cm); bought by Zachariades.
Lot 23 is the amphora. On Thursday 11 November 1926, in Sotheby’s rooms in New Bond Street, it was offered as “A Diota ... Kition fabric” and went to a buyer the list records as Zachariades. The catalogue gives its height as 27 inches (68.6 cm), where the 2024 sale gave 65 cm: a difference still to be checked against the pot.
The catalogue does not name the owner of the Cypriot collection, and Zachariades bought all four of the large diotas in the sale.
Zachariades is a name on a list and nothing more. By 1974 the amphora belonged to Edward Varley Kayley (1900–1974); his family kept it until Bonhams sold it in London on 4 July 2024. It passed through the London gallery ArtAncient and joined the Drakopoulos Collection in January 2025. Only the years between Zachariades and Kayley are still blank.