David Johnson

David Johnson built a collection of Cypriot antiquities in the 2010s and then gave all of it away for return to the island. By his own account he started collecting in early 2013 and had not intended to become a collector; he concentrated on pottery and, by the time he wrote, on the Bronze Age². One account of the Department of Antiquities' dealings with him describes him as an English architect and artist³. Little is published about his life before collecting, and his date of birth is not recorded.

The collection covered some 2,500 years, from the Middle Chalcolithic to about 480 BC, and consisted mainly of pottery, with bronze and stone pieces and some early coins. Its strength lay in Early and Middle Bronze Age material⁴. On his own website Johnson writes that the contents of most private collections are, by modern definitions, looted, and that he has had to accept "the unpalatable truth" that this is also true of most of his own. He adds that he owns items with known provenance only from the 1970s or 1980s, and that when he later tried to buy only pieces with pre-1970 provenance it was almost impossible².

Offering the collection to Cyprus

In December 2018 the Cypriot newspapers Politis (22 December) and O Fileleftheros (23 December) carried articles on the repatriation of Bronze Age antiquities from Johnson's collection³. The Department of Antiquities answered on 7 January 2019 with a press release. It said that his collection was known to the Department and to the Law Office of the Republic, and that it had replied positively to the offer of a "possible" donation to the Cyprus Museum³.

According to the Department, Johnson wished the return to happen after his death, and his final decision depended on the Department approving purchases of Cypriot antiquities from sources he would not disclose. The Department's last communication with him, dated 13 December 2018, repeated that it would gladly accept a donation if he chose to make one. It added that the repatriation and the choice of exhibition space were for the competent authorities alone³.

Walk of Truth, Kykkos and the charity

Johnson took a different route. He writes that on 23 September 2019 an agreement was signed through the non-governmental organisation Walk of Truth with Kykkos Monastery, in the Troodos mountains, where the collection was to be exhibited². The first 87 pieces were intended to return to Cyprus in March 2020, but he reports that Covid disrupted freight, the agreement was found to be faulty and had to be rewritten, and the return was delayed by more than two years².

His website later says that all the Cypriot items were being donated to the Cultural Heritage Protection Foundation, a newly registered UK charity, and that he hoped the first 130 objects could be exported very soon². The catalogue, The David Johnson Collection of Cypriot Antiquities (Paul Holberton Publishing, 288 pages, 270 illustrations), accompanies the opening of a new gallery at the Kykkos Monastery Museum. The publisher states that the collection is being donated to the Republic of Cyprus through the Hadjitofi Cultural Heritage Protection Foundation and that the museum has committed to exhibiting it in its entirety⁴.