Joseph Billiet

Joseph Billiet put the Cypriot objects in the Lycklama collection at Cannes into order and into print. He took up the post of conservateur of the Cannes museums at the end of 1928 and found the collection, moved in 1920 to the old castle, in disorder; Théodore Reinach's complaints of 1923 had gone unheeded¹. His dates of birth and death are not recorded.

By his own account, he spent about two years cleaning, restoring, identifying, classing and describing some 3,200 objects. He says the work was paid for by himself, his friends and the Amis du Musée de Cannes, while the municipality was hostile and refused to fund a detailed catalogue¹. He thanked Dr Contenau, and Alexandre Varille for help with the Egyptian section¹.

The results appeared in his article on the Lycklama collection in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1931. Its Cypriot items are two small jugs, a flask and a spouted vase which he calls "Aegean style of the second bronze industry", eleven jugs, craters and a bowl in Cypriot Iron Age styles, and a woman's mask, illustrated as figure 17¹. He also published a 35-page catalogue of the museum's seals, Cachets et cylindres-sceaux du Musée de Cannes (Paris, Geuthner), dated 1931 by one reviewer and 1932 by another^3,4. According to Antoinette Decaudin, who dates his tenure 1928 to 1931, his inventory numbers (MCL AO) still define the Cannes holdings⁵.