Thursday 29 August 2019

TimeLine Auction Roman Mask ‘matches Crosby Garrett find’ [UPDATED]


A dugup Roman masked helmet, suggested to be a "near pair to the famed Crosby Garrett parade helmet", comes up for sale next month (Roland Arkell, 'Mask ‘matches Crosby Garrett find’ Antiques Trade Gazette 26th Aug 2019).
The copper-alloy mask depicting an Amazonian warrior or goddess dating from the late 2nd or early 3rd century AD will be offered by TimeLine in Mayfair on September 3, with an estimate of £80,000- 100,000. The 10in (26cm) mask with its finely chased tutulus hairstyle, diadems and garlands has distinct artistic parallels to the near-complete helmet found by a father-and-son team of metal detectorists in May 2010 and later sold at Christie’s for £1.9m plus premium. The restorer who worked the mask believes they were made by the same workshop, perhaps even the same craftsman. [...] The mask is the property of a London vendor and has been through several British collections and dealers since it was first purchased in York in the 1970s [...] the find site is unknown although it is believed it was also unearthed in northern England.
Why not somewhere near, for example, Catterick with its Sarmatian units (Numerus Equitatum Sarmatarum and Cuneus Sarmatarum)? That seems possible to me. Two made by the same workshop, eh? Apparently also restored by the same guy, because the article says it was the restorer that affirms the affinity. The object has been reassembled from four pieces with some small areas of resin infill (what, in those old collections, or now?), and "it will be sold together with an Art Loss Register certificate and a metallurgic analytical report" as just one of more than 4000 antiquities lots to be offered by Timeline across seven days (the latter six days in Harwich). Art Trade Gazette is wrong when it suggests:
It was the discovery of the Crosby Garrett helmet and its subsequent sale to a private buyer that was the catalyst to a widening of the 1996 Treasure Act and specifically a change to the definition of what is legally classed as treasure in the UK.
and really should know better.

UPDATE 27th oct 2019
It sold below the estimate (was it the resin? Better than polyfiller).
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Postd on You Tube as: September 2019 Auction Results 25 Oct 2019 by Timeline Auctions Ltd
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