Uploaded January 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Title: Creating the Bowes Museum: collectors, dealers and auctions in mid-nineteenth-century Paris
Speaker: Dr Simon Spier (Curator, Ceramics and Glass 1600-1800, Victoria and Albert Museum, London)
Abstract: Dr Simon Spier will explore the formation of the founding collection of decorative arts at The Bowes Museum, County Durham, amassed largely on the French art market in the 1860s and 70s. The museum’s founders, John Bowes (1811–1885) and Joséphine Coffin-Chevalier (1825–1874), are well known figures in the history of collecting, but less well known are the methods and networks they used to purchase their many art objects. Investigating in depth the dealers they sought advice from, the sale rooms they frequented and the other collectors they interacted with, this talk will show how the Bowes utilised a rapidly expanding market for decorative arts that allowed a new social class of collectors to form significant collections with relative ease.
Title: Creating the Bowes Museum: collectors, dealers and auctions in mid-nineteenth-century Paris
Speaker: Dr Simon Spier (Curator, Ceramics and Glass 1600-1800, Victoria and Albert Museum, London)
Abstract: Dr Simon Spier will explore the formation of the founding collection of decorative arts at The Bowes Museum, County Durham, amassed largely on the French art market in the 1860s and 70s. The museum’s founders, John Bowes (1811–1885) and Joséphine Coffin-Chevalier (1825–1874), are well known figures in the history of collecting, but less well known are the methods and networks they used to purchase their many art objects. Investigating in depth the dealers they sought advice from, the sale rooms they frequented and the other collectors they interacted with, this talk will show how the Bowes utilised a rapidly expanding market for decorative arts that allowed a new social class of collectors to form significant collections with relative ease.
