Ancient CyprusAncient Cyprus

Curator · Scholar

Julian Porter

fl. 1920–1998

Curator of Bexhill Museum who researched Lady Brassey's collecting and gave Lou Taylor the evidence for her account of what became of the Brassey collection.

Biography

Julian Porter, Curator of Bexhill Museum in Sussex, supplied the evidence for part of what became of Lady Brassey's collection after 1919. He wrote a Leicester MA thesis on her in 1995 and, in September 1996, a Bexhill Museum booklet, Lady Brassey 1839-1887, Victorian Traveller, Collector and Writer1,2,3. Lou Taylor thanked him for "generous help" with her chapter on the fate of the Brassey Cypriot artefacts, and interviewed him in September 19981.

Taylor reports that Annie Brassey's daughter Mabelle Egerton gave the geology section of the collection to Bexhill Museum in 1920, and that Porter found some Brassey Roman glass among it; the glass is now catalogued and displayed there1. Porter told her he was convinced that after Tab Brassey's death in 1919 and the lease of Normanshurst to a girls' school, Brassey objects left in the house and its outbuildings reached public auctions. Taylor presents this as his opinion, citing Appendix 1 of his thesis and the interview1. The hundreds of Cypriot pieces remained at Hastings Museum and Art Gallery1. Nothing further is recorded of Porter.

Life and work

  1. 1920–1998
    Found that Brassey items of Roman glass had been donated to Bexhill Museum in 1920 together with the geology collection (given by Mabelle Egerton); these are catalogued and displayed.

    BexhillTaylor 2001, p. 245Taylor 2001, p. 244

  2. 1995
    MA thesis at the Department of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, on Lady Brassey as a Victorian collector; Appendix 1 and pp. 37-39 are cited by Taylor for the later history of the Brassey collection.

    LeicesterTaylor 2001, p. 247, nn. 1

  3. September 1996
    Published the booklet Lady Brassey 1839-1887, Victorian Traveller, Collector and Writer, issued by Bexhill Museum.

    BexhillTaylor 2001, p. 247, n. 1

  4. September 1998
    Interviewed by Lou Taylor; he is convinced that after Tab Brassey's death (1919) and the lease of Normanshurst to a girls' school, not a few Brassey objects, probably abandoned in the house and out-houses, reached public auctions.

    Taylor 2001, p. 244, n. 30

Connections

2 people

Scholarship

Colleagues & contacts

Sources

  1. 1.Lou Taylor (2001). “Lady Brassey, 1870-1886: traveller, writer, collector, educator, woman of means and the fate of her Cypriot artefacts”. Cyprus in the 19th Century AD: Fact, Fancy and Fiction, 239-247. Oxford, Oxbow.
  2. 2.J. Porter (1995). “Lady Brassey: a Victorian collector”. MA thesis, Department of Museum Studies, University of Leicester.
  3. 3.J. Porter (1996). Lady Brassey 1839-1887, Victorian Traveller, Collector and Writer. Bexhill, Bexhill Museum.