Skip to Content
 

Royall Tyler to Robert Woods Bliss, January 30, 1939

30.I.39

Dear Robert.

I’ve just had the catalogue of the MET Augustan show.Augustan Art, An Exhibition Commemorating the Bimillenium of the Birth of Augustus, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, January 4–February 19, 1939. The moment I saw the cover I guessed what was awaiting me. How amusing! The thing reproduced p. 22 fig 49Glass jug, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 17.194.226. must be the one Sangiorgi mentioned, as reported in my letterJanuary 17, 1939. which crossed this very catalogue. And it seems to be from the same mould as Kelek’s.

You can doubtless find out what JPMJohn Pierpont “J. P.” Morgan (1837–1913), an American financier, banker, philanthropist, and art collector. paid for his, & there’s probably someone in the MET who has information on the prices paid for ΕΝΝΙωΝ’sEnnion, a maker of mold-blown glass during the first half of the first century CE probably in Sidon in Phoenicia (modern Lebanon). works by less gawdy amateurs, in less gawdy times than JPM’s.

Anyway, I hope you’ll stay off Kelek’s, unless he comes down to a price that’s a mere faction of what he’s been asking. I think $5000 would be altogether too much, personally. And I also think it wouldn’t be a bad lesson for Kelek to be shown that he can’t do it to you to the extent he seems to have thought he could when he produced the prices he asked for the glassThis molded blue glass ewer has not been identified.—and for the pottery mugBZ.1939.31.—though I admit the pottery mug is tempting, or would be for $5000.

Well, many thanks for that catalogue. I’m thrilled by the synchronism of our correspondence on the object.

Fondest love to you both

R. T.

 
Associated Artworks: BZ.1939.31