Bidspirit auction | Thot.

Thot. - An alabaster figurine of the god Thot with muscular human body and head of an ibis with skirt and tripartite wig. Crown and right arm had been worked separately and are missing. Broken above the knees, damage at the left shoulder. Ptolemaic Period, about 330 - 30 BC.  Erwin Oppenländer and his Collections Oppenländer is a resonant name for anyone interested in the fascinating world of ancient glass art, and the exhibition catalog Gläser der Antike. Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer is never missing from a library that deals with this colorful, delicate material. The catalog was expertly curated by Axel von Saldern, the later author of the fundamental handbook Antikes Glas , and written in collaboration with the scholars Birgit Nolte, Peter La Baume, and Thea Elisabeth Haevernick. It presents the development of glass, from its beginnings in the 2nd millennium BC to late antiquity, with over 750 glass objects from this collection, exhibited in 1974 at the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Hamburg and in 1975 at the Romano-Germanic Museum in Cologne. The collection was assembled from the 1930s by the Waiblingen entrepreneur Erwin Oppenländer (1901 - 1988), whose descendants continued to manage and enlarge it. It is remarkable how well-connected Erwin Oppenländer was already in the early phase of his collecting activities. Some of the early acquisitions come from the collection of the archaeologist and art dealer Pierre Mavrogordato (1870- 1948), who played an important role in the German archaeological scene since his move to Berlin in 1905. He was probably also the one who, as a fatherly friend, awakened the fascination for glass and accompanied the development of the collection in its early years. However, the interests of the collector were not limited to glass. Since 1967, 161cylinder seals from the Oppenländer estate have been in the collection of the Institute for Near Eastern Archaeology at the Free University of Berlin. In addition, there exists an extensive - so far largely unknown to the public - collection of ancient Egyptian art. Pieces from this collection also found their way into significant public exhibitions in Munich, Stuttgart, and Hanover. A large part of the glass is now in the Getty Villa in Malibu. The magnificent collection of Egyptian art and another part of the glass collection now form the beginning of our summer auction.