Piéridès (consignor of the Drouot sale, 10 Feb 1873)

On Monday 10 February 1873 a sale of Cypriot antiquities took place at the Hôtel des Commissaires-Priseurs, 5 rue Drouot, in Paris. The catalogue title offers a "collection importante de verres antiques, bijoux, terres cuites" from excavations made on Cyprus "par M. Piéridès"². C. D. Cobham's bibliography lists it as 261 lots⁵. Marie-Christine Hellmann calls it a sale run by Henri Hoffmann of the collection of the Pierides family of Larnaca³.

The title gives no forename. Hellmann places the collection among those formed by the descendants of Demetrios Pierides, mainly his son Djabra³. Djabra was born in 1852 and so was 21 at the time⁴, and the consignor may equally have been Demetrios himself or another member of the family.

The catalogue introduction, quoted in English by Vivien Tatton-Brown's volume, says the digging would not be renewed because the Ottoman government had just forbidden new searches for antiquities⁴. In his notebook for 24 April 1873 Wilhelm Froehner recorded that he had classed and described the gold jewellery of "G. Pieridès"³. The catalogue's glass, jewellery and terracottas may be the same material, but the notebook does not say so. No list of buyers is recorded.