Leland Stanford

Three publications name Leland Stanford as the buyer of about 5,000 Cypriot objects from the Cesnola collection. Olivier Masson writes that "already in 1896, therefore in Cesnola's lifetime", 5,000 duplicates of the collection were sold to "a politician and collector, Leland Stanford"¹. Lena Marangou says the sale took place while General Luigi Palma di Cesnola was still director of the Metropolitan Museum, and that Stanford later donated the objects to Stanford University². Barker and Merrillees write that Leland Stanford senior bought part of the collection from the Metropolitan Museum in 1896 as part of the foundation of the Leland Stanford Junior Museum, some 5,000 Cypriot items in all³.

Leland Stanford died on 21 June 1893⁵, three years before the sale these publications date to 1896. None of them cites an invoice or a minute naming the purchaser.

The objects went to the Stanford University Museum. Many were damaged or destroyed in the earthquake of 1906, and many were later sold or exchanged with other university collections, the Ashmolean among them^1,2. In 1953 at least five Mycenaean pieces labelled as from Alambra went from the Stanford holding to the Nicholson Museum in Sydney, in an exchange arranged with A. D. Trendall³. About 450 of the terracottas were catalogued in 1964, and the Early and Middle Bronze Age pottery in 1969¹.