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Our Dark Materials: Rediscovering an Egyptian Collection

Gustave Posno

Gustave Posno was a Dutch dealer and collector active in Cairo, Egypt, during the later nineteenth century. A jeweler by trade, Posno assembled a substantial collection of Egyptian antiquities, many of which he sold at a major auction in Cairo in 1874 and in Paris in 1883--it is for these auctions he is principally known. Items from Posno's collection are among the earliest to have entered Stanford's holdings. Leland Stanford Jr. purchased them in Paris during the family's 1883-1884 European trip.

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(1868-1884)
Born Leland DeWitt Stanford, Leland Stanford Jr. was the precocious son of Leland and Jane Stanford. He developed an early interest in archaeology, including Egyptology. Although he never traveled to Egypt himself, he purchased Egyptian antiquities from Gustave Posno and other European dealers during family trips to the continent in 1881 and 1883/1884. His tutor and biographer, Herbert Nash, describes Leland Jr. spending hours in the Egyptian Wing of the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, copying hieroglyphics and sketching artifacts. After Leland Jr.'s unexpected death in 1884 at the age of 15, his interests inspired his parents to found a museum in his honor at Leland Stanford Junior Memorial University.
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1. Jane Lathrop Stanford
  (1828-1905)
  Jane Stanford supported her son Leland Stanford Jr.'s interest in archaeology and antiquities during his life and continued collecting in his memory after his death at the age of fifteen. When her husband, Leland Stanford, was alive, they both acquired and donated items from Egypt and other places for the Leland Stanford Junior Memorial University Museum. Her work continued after her husband's death, taking her on two trips to Egypt to network with dealers and acquire antiquities in person. Stanford's personal secretary, Bertha Berner, joined her for both trips: the first in 1901, the second in the winter of 1903/1904. Stanford worked closely with Harry Peterson, the first curator of the university's museum.
2. Leland Stanford
  (1824-1893)
  The California politician and railroad tycoon Leland Stanford supported his son's burgeoning collecting by introducing the boy to influential curators, by supporting family travels to the East Coast and Europe, and by funding his collecting. Stanford gave his son an allowance that Leland Stanford Jr. used to purchase Egyptian antiquities, among other items. After Leland Jr.'s death in 1884, Stanford and his wife, Jane Stanford, purchased Egyptian and other antiquities for the university museum they founded in their son's memory.
3. Herbert Charles Nash
  (1954-2009)
  Herbert Nash was hired by Leland and Jane Stanford to tutor Leland Stanford Jr., a post he held until the boy's death in 1884 at the age of fifteen. Nash wrote a laudatory biography of the young man, In Memoriam: Leland Stanford, Jr. It includes information about Leland Jr.'s travels and emerging interests in archaeology and antiquities. Nash also wrote a short, descriptive guide to the Leland Jr. "Museum" (as the boy called the installation of his collections in his parents' San Francisco mansion), which was recreated in the memorial rooms of the University Museum when it opened in 1893.
4. Gustave Posno Gustave Posno was a Dutch dealer and collector active in Cairo, Egypt, during the later nineteenth century. A jeweler by trade, Posno assembled a substantial collection of Egyptian antiquities, many of which he sold at a major auction in Cairo in 1874 and in Paris in 1883--it is for these auctions he is principally known. Items from Posno's collection are among the earliest to have entered Stanford's holdings. Leland Stanford Jr. purchased them in Paris during the family's 1883-1884 European trip.

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(1868-1884)

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(1868-1884)