An extraordinarily rare and important 19th-century urn, thought lost to history, was recently discovered by Heritage Auctions and is set to go to auction June 18 in Dallas, Texas. Designed in the early 19th century by furniture designer Thomas Hope, the urn was found in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the collection of David D. Denham, where it had been modified into a side table.
Heritage set the pre auction estimate of of $40,000 to $60,000 on the rare bronze. According to research, the urn’s mate resides in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), the world’s largest museum of applied and decorative arts and design.
Hope, a member of a Dutch banking dynasty and a designer and collector, commissioned the vase in the Greek Revival style for the dining room of his house on Duchess Street in London – the inspiration for his influential book titled Household Furniture and Interior Decoration.
Experts working at Heritage matched the Urn’s background with the details which confirmed it to be a pair to the one at the V&A. The newly-discovered vase’s specific placement of the mask mounts at the obverse and reverse matched the vase in the museum’s collection, as does the placement of specific notches and scratches made to each vase.
Heritage specialist Karen Rigdon discovered the piece in the collection of the late businessman and interior designer David D Denham (1943-2019). “The estate is unsure when the vase first entered Denham’s collection or when it was made into a side table [with the addition of a circular glass top],” she said. “But Denham was a well-known social figure in the area and admired for his collector’s eye.”
“This important discovery was a remarkable surprise,” said Karen Rigdon, Director of Fine & Decorative Art at Heritage Auctions. “No one knew where the urn was for decades until we recognized it during a house call.”