Augustus Wollaston Franks

Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks (1826-1897) was first Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities at the British Museum from 1866 to 1896². A. Ulbrich and T. Kiely write that he used private wealth to enlarge his department and took an interest in Cypriot material for European prehistory and ethnography; they credit him with the first scientific examination of Cypriot copper and bronze, in 1874¹. V. Kassianidou and A. Charalambous place those analyses at the Stockholm prehistory congress of that year⁴.

His sources for Cypriot objects are given differently. Ulbrich and Kiely say he was in contact with Robert Hamilton Lang, from whom some of Lang's Cypriot collection "seems to have been obtained", and that he acquired items for his private collection from Thomas Backhouse Sandwith¹. Kassianidou and Charalambous instead say the bronzes analysed had been bought from Luigi Palma di Cesnola⁴. In 1876 Franks presented to the British Museum a White Slip I bowl from Verghi that had belonged to Sandwith (1876.5-15.4)³.

In 1883, in Feuardent v. Cesnola, Franks swore an affidavit for Cesnola's defence stating that recutting, colouring or unmarked restoration of an antiquity impairs its archaeological value⁵.

Franks died in 1897. His bequest to the museum included Cypriot items, and the museum's Cypriot accession lists headed "Franks Bequest and other gifts" run from 1868 into the twentieth century without separating his own gifts from those of other donors².