John Jones Brown

A letter of 3 January 1886 in the Queensland Museum records the gift of a case of Cypriot pottery and glass from John Jones Brown, a schoolteacher, younger brother of Samuel Brown, Government Engineer of Cyprus¹. The letter is signed "Jn J Brown"; an earlier publication had read it as "Iris Brown" and taken the writer for a sister, an error Kiely and Merrillees corrected in 2012¹.

Brown was born in 1837 and reached Queensland in 1862. He taught at several schools, became Principal of Bald Hills State School in January 1884, took leave on 20 March 1886 to visit Britain, returned on 17 January 1887, and resigned from the teaching service on 30 November 1892¹.

In the letter he says the pottery is "mostly of pre-historic date, & not more recent than the time of Homer" and the glass "of Phoenician type", that it was unearthed at Soli and Curium by his brother, and that he wished "the public to get the benefit of these curios"¹. The case held some 74 pieces. How long he had held them, or how they reached him, is not recorded; Kiely and Merrillees suggest that eight Bronze Age pieces may come from Samuel Brown's 1885 excavation at Ayia Paraskevi, Nicosia, supervised by Max Ohnefalsch-Richter¹. No sale or dealing by John Brown is recorded. The objects are in the Queensland Museum, Brisbane.