George Eumorfopoulos

George Aristides Eumorfopoulos (18 April 1863 Liverpool - 19 December 1939 Chelsea Embankment), [ [http://www.christopherlong.co.uk/gen/eumorfopoulosgen/fg03/fg03_258.html George Eumorfopoulos] ] was an English collector of Chinese, Korean and Near Eastern art.

He was born at 43 Bedford Street South, Mount Pleasant, Merseyside, the son of Aristides Georges Eumorfopoulos (1825-1897) and Mariora Eustratius Scaramanga (1840-1908). [ [http://www.christopherlong.co.uk/gen/vlastogen/fg04/fg04_119.html Christopher Long] ] His grandparents had fled Chios during the Chios massacre of 1822.

Until August 1934 he was vice president of a London firm established in 1819 - Ralli Brothers, of Greek origin, a firm of private bankers who were also importers of rape, rice, cotton and hemp from India. Eumorfopoulos lived at 7 Chelsea Embankment and was a respected Orientalist. His business trips often took him to the East, providing him with ample opportunity to start a serious collection in about 1905. His collecting was unusual in that he did not make use of the services of experts or agents, but relied on his own rapidly-growing experience in acquiring objects. His collection of Oriental art grew to an enormous size, obliging him to add a two-storey museum to the back of his Chelsea house. He founded the [http://www.ocs-london.com/ Oriental Ceramic Society] and was its first president from 1921 until his death in 1939. He published a number of catalogues illustrating and describing items from his collection during the 1920s. Free access to his collection and encouragement from him, inspired his neighbours Nell and Charles Vyse to experiment with Oriental stoneware glazes. [ [http://www.amazon.co.uk/s?search-type=ss&index=books-uk&field-author=George%20Eumorfopoulos Amazon Books] ]

Eumorfopoulos had intended to bequeath his collection to the nation, but the Great Depression of the 1930s forced him to sell part of his collection at bargain-basement rates. In 1935 he sold some of his pieces in what was called 'a princely gesture', to the Victoria & Albert and British Museums for £100 000. In 1936 the Royal Academy's Burlington House arranged an international exhibition of Chinese art, to which end George Eumorfopoulos served on the organising committee and visited China to help select treasures from the Forbidden City, on loan from the Nationalist Government. [cite news
author=
title=Princely Gesture
date=1935-01-28
work=Time Magazine
url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,748354,00.html?promoid=googlep
accessdate=2008-08-10]

After his death, his personal library found its way to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

He was married to Julia Scaramanga (born 26 June 1864 in London, died 12 January 1944 at Crawley Down, Sussex). She was the daughter of George Emmanuel Scaramanga (1825-1897) and Elizabeth ‘Eliza’ Franghiadi (1843-1933).

References

Bibliography

*"The George Eumorfopoulos Collection of the Chinese Frescoes". BINYON, Laurence. London, Ernest Benn, 1927 folio. vii, 22pp. 50 color plates
*"George Eumorfopoulos Collection Catalogue" (11 vols.) HOBSON, Robert L. et al. London 1925-28, Benn.