John Pierpont Morgan

The New York banker J. Pierpont Morgan bought the second Lambousa treasure, the silver and gold found by quarrymen from Karavas in 1902, from a Paris dealer². Part of the find had been confiscated by the Cypriot authorities (three David Plates, two cross-monogram plates and a few jewels, now in Nicosia); the rest left the island and was offered in Paris by the dealer Sivadjian, whose high price kept it unsold for some time^1,2. Hellmann cites a letter of May 1904 in which W. Froehner wrote that Morgan was in Paris and hesitating, after Canessa had sold him an expensive bronze, and she thinks, "it seems", that he took the treasure at the beginning of 1906; Merrillees likewise gives Paris, 1906^1,7. It was published as part of Morgan's collection by A. Sambon in 1906 and by O. M. Dalton in 1907¹.

In 1909 Morgan bought the collection of Canon William Greenwell and gave it to the British Museum³.

He died in 1913⁵. The Lambousa pieces entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1917 with the credit line "Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan"; the Museum's Bulletin says that the medieval collections lent by Morgan were by the end of that year largely included in a gift of over three thousand objects from his son, J. P. Morgan Jr.⁶. The Metropolitan holds six of the David Plates, a niello cross-monogram plate and much of the jewellery, and Dumbarton Oaks has a medallion and a girdle from the find².