Axe Head

A bronze axe head with an ornate cast bronze shaft-hole and crescent-shaped blade. A couchant lioness lies along the length of the shaft-hole, with tail raised in a swooping curve over the back. Small incised dots are used to render the texture of the lioness’s fur, and details such as the divides between the toes are also added this way. The rounded hole for the shaft is adorned with raised concentric rings. At the join between the shaft-hole and the blade is the face of an animal, with raised, rounded ears, and large eyes opened wide. A slender snout sits between two raised circles, possibly jowls or paws. The inner edge of the blade itself, framed with a slight raised lip, is incised with bands of zigzags, dots, and overlapping lines in a braid or rope pattern. 
 
Many decorated bronze objects dating from the Iron Age (c. 1300/1250-700/650 B.C.) have been found within the Luristan province of Iran. They are characterised by stylised human and animal forms (both natural and fantastical). The objects include arms and other equipment, jewellery, horse gear, and standards. Spike-butted and crescent-shaped axes are among the most characteristic of Luristan arms. Several examples with Elamite or Assyrian dedicatory inscriptions provide some of the earliest firm dates for these axes, placing their production in the Early Iron Age. Bronze examples with cutting edges, such as this one, are rare after the Iron Age II (1000-586 B.C.). Due to their rarity, it is possible that these axes were used as heirlooms or regalia, rather than as weapons. Sometimes referred to as halberds, an axe of this kind was found during the excavations at Sialk, near Kashan, in the 1930s, securely locating this style to the Luristan region.

Exhibition of Persian Art, The Iranian Institute, 1940. 
Ancient Bronzes; a selection from the Heckett Collection, Heckmeres Highlands, Valencia, Pennsylvania, Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 5 November 1964-10 January 1965, no. 15. 

Phyllis Ackerman, Guide to the Exhibition of Persian Art, exh. cat., The Iranian Institute, New York, 1940, no. U, p. 110. 
P. Verdier, Ancient Bronzes; a selection from the Heckett Collection, Heckmeres Highlands, Valencia, Pennsylvania, exh. cat., Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1964, no. 15. 
Ancient Bronzes from the Estate of Greta S. Heckett; Antiquities from the Estate of Fahim Kouchakji and Other Owners, Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 21 May 1977, Lot 215. 
Antiquities, Sotheby’s, London, 9-10 July 1984, Lot 113, pp. 40-41.

Previously in the Private Collection of Mrs. Christian R. Holmes (1871-1941), Cincinnati and Long Island, by at least 1940.  
Private Collection of Adrienne Minassian (1913-1994), New York, by at least 1976. 
Private Collection of Greta S. Heckett (1899-1976), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., acquired from the above by at least 1976. 
Sold at: Ancient Bronzes from the Estate of Greta S. Heckett; Antiquities from the Estate of Fahim Kouchakji and Other Owners, Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 21 May 1977, Lot 215. 
Private Collection, Pacific Northwest, U.S.A., acquired from the above sale. 
ALR: S00259573, with IADAA Certificate, this item has been checked against the Interpol database. 

Mrs. Christian R. Holmes (1871-1941), or ‘Bettie’ Babette Fleischmann Holmes, was born in Cincinnati in 1871, one of three children of Charles Louis Fleischmann, food manufacturer and founder of the Fleischmann Yeast Company. The success of Fleischmann’s commercially produced yeast, which allowed bread to be mass-produced, made Holmes one of the wealthiest women in America through her inheritance. She married Danish eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist, Dr. Christian Rasmus Holmes in 1892. The couple founded several hospitals in Cincinnati, including the Cincinnati General Hospital in 1903, the Dr. C. R. Holmes Hospital, and the Christian R. Holmes Memorial Hospital. Bettie served as supervisor at the Dr. C. R. Holmes Hospital for more than five years, and made significant contributions to its funding.

Following her husband’s death in 1920, Holmes moved to New York in 1927. Here she established the Holmes Foundation to continue her husband’s work to improve hospitals. She continued her philanthropy: it is estimated that she gave over $20 million to good causes during her lifetime. One of her passions and recipient of much patronage was music. She served as President of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and director of the New York Philharmonic Symphony Society. She kept a box and was a board member of the Metropolitan Opera Guild, and served as vice-Chairman of the New York Stadium Concerts and as board member of the Musician’s Emergency Fund. Holmes was also a passionate opponent of Prohibition – much of her fortune came from the gin produced by her family as a yeast by-product – and was Chairman of the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform before the repeal of the 18th Amendment in 1933. She was also an active member and donor to the Traveller’s Aid Society, Emergency Unemployment Relief Committee, New York Horticultural Society, National Institute of Social Sciences, New York Botanical Gardens, American Museum of Natural History, and Federated Garden Clubs of New York State, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of the City of New York.

Holmes assembled her collection of art objects and antiquities over a period of twenty years, and it was housed at ‘The Chimneys’ at Sands Point on Long Island, New York. The 42-room Tudor-Revival mansion was built for Holmes in 1929, and named for the elaborate chimneys of imported brick, which were each individually designed. Styled after an English Tudor country house on the outside, 65% of the material used were salvaged from old manors in England and imported to New York. The interior was far more extravagant, containing: an indoor swimming pool designed as the ‘Alaskan Room’ was decorated with authentic Inuit totem poles; art-deco mirrored changing rooms and steam baths; jungle-themed murals; a shooting gallery; bowling alley; squash-court; and its own Prohibition-defying bar.

Her collection was deemed one of the finest collections of Chinese bronzes, archaic jades, and porcelains in America, and also featured Scythian, Persian art, and Gothic tapestries. Holmes funded many expeditions led by Arthur Upham Pope and the Iranian Institute. In 1940 she leant what Pope described as, ‘Luristan bronzes of great interest’ to the Iranian Institute’s exhibition in New York. Holmes frequently loaned objects to overseas exhibitions, such as the 1929 Chinese Art Exhibition in Berlin, and the Royal Academy’s 1935 and 1936 International Exhibitions of Chinese Art. She also donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Woman’s Association of the Fine Arts Department at New York University, and the Archaeological Institute of America. In 1942, C.F. Yau, the manager of the New York branch of Tonying and Company, published a portfolio of her collection of bronzes. After Holmes’ death in 1941, much of her collection was sold at Parke-Bernet in 1942, and was absorbed into the Avery Brundage Collection at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. In the introduction to the 1942 sale, Leslie A. Hyam (President of Parke-Bernet) wrote that, ‘few people in our day had done as much as Mrs Holmes for the furthering of those claims of art which are put forward by its early history’.

Adrienne Minassian (1913-1994) was the daughter of the dealer Kirkor Minassian (1874-1944), who specialised in Islamic and Near-Eastern antiquities in his galleries in New York and Paris. Although the New York gallery closed in 1923, Kirkor continued to work as an active dealer in the New York art market until the end of the decade, and Adrienne continued her father’s legacy as a premier collector and dealer in Islamic antiquities for the latter half of the twentieth century. As well as operating as one of the few Islamic art dealers in America, Minassian’s personal collection took after her fathers, with key focuses on manuscripts, miniature paintings, and ceramics.