Desmond Morris

Desmond Morris, the zoologist and author, formed what he described as the largest private collection of Cypriot antiquities outside Cyprus¹, and published it with a check-list. He was born at Purton, Wiltshire, on 24 January 1928⁴.

His interest began in the summer of 1967, when he first saw Room Two of the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia. He was then Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London¹. A London sale that autumn, with more than a hundred Cypriot pieces in it, led him to start a collection "for serious study". Over the following fifteen years he went on adding to it from salerooms and dealers in London, New York, Boston, Amsterdam and Paris¹.

In 1973 Angela Tamvaki visited to draw pieces for her own study and suggested that the collection be published, and Morris began outlining a book¹. The jacket of the finished book quotes Vassos Karageorghis as saying that publication had become the owner's responsibility¹. The book argues that private collectors must make their material available to scholars¹. Kathleen Kimber cleaned and restored the pieces over some ten years¹.

The book describes two purchases in detail. In March 1972 he bought the Red Polished scenic bowl known as the Oxford Bowl from a London dealer, after negotiations with the Ashmolean Museum had broken down. He thought it came from Margi, but had no proof¹. On 11 July 1973 he bought the Deer-milking Jug at Christie's in London, lot 87¹. For most of the collection the preface and check-list give the provenance as "no provenance"¹.

The book

The Art of Ancient Cyprus, with a check-list of the author's collection appeared in 1985 from Phaidon Press in association with Jonathan Cape. It states that the collection ran to more than 1,100 items and that nearly 600 of the objects illustrated were unpublished¹. The book is dedicated to the late James Bomford, whose generosity had first led Morris into the visual arts¹.

The sale

The collection was sold at Christie's London on 6 November 2001, in a sale titled "The Art of Ancient Cyprus, The Desmond Morris Collection"². The J. Paul Getty Museum bought pieces there: its record for 2001.78, a Red Polished bowl with high-relief decoration, gives the Christie's lot as 190, and 2001.79 is a Red Polished jug from the same sale³.

Morris died on 19 April 2026 at Naas, County Kildare, Ireland⁴.