Belt Plaque 

A large bronze plaque, possibly from a belt clasp, featuring a central motif of a stylised stag turning its head away towards its rump. The stag’s neck and back are curved into an S-shape, with the neck bending backwards over the slender waist. Each of the stag’s legs is abstracted into curves and a prolonged knee spur. Wide tri-pronged antlers extend from the stag’s head to fill with width of the upper quarter of the composition. A small bird sits below the stag’s body. The scene is framed with two rows of bands adorned with a braided pattern. A raised circular boss sits at each of the four corners. 
 
Bronzes such as this were produced in the Caucasus region, from the late second millennium B.C. onwards. Highly stylised animals with small waists and arched necks and backs were the core motif of this style, and feature on a range of objects, including buckles, axes and pins. Examples have been found in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Northern Caucasus, dating from the beginning of the Late Bronze and Early Iron ages. Cast bronze belt clasps have been excavated in the Republic of Georgia, and are one of the region’s distinct cultural outputs in the first few centuries A.D.. The openwork patterns may imitate thin plaques of gold and silver, which were decorated with twisted wire and filigree, and would have been nailed at the corners to wood and leather backings.  

The Ernest Brummer Collection, Sotheby & Co. London, 16-17 November 1964, Lot 173. 

Previously with C.T. Loo Chinese Art, New York, by at least 1957. 
With the Brummer Gallery, New York, acquired from the above, 28 December 1957 until at least 1964, accompanied by inventory card and photograph, purchase ledger entry, and old collection label. 
Private Collection of Christoph Bernoulli (1897-1981), Basel, acquired from the above. 
Thence by descent, Private Collection, Basel. 
ALR: S00263290, with IADAA Certificate, this item has been checked against the Interpol database. 

Ching Tsai Loo (commonly known as C. T. Loo, 1880-1957) was born in Lujiadou village in Huzhou, Zhejiang, China. He was raised by his uncle, and decided to venture to Nanxun in order to try his luck in the silk trade. He found a job as cook for Zhang Baoshan, a successful merchant, whose son, Zhang Renjie, was appointed to the Chinese Embassy in France. Loo travelled to Paris alongside Zhang in 1902, at the age of 22. Zhang offered him a job as doorman to his Parisian teahouse, from which Loo worked his way up into the Zhang family Chinese antiquities and artwork import business at gallery Ton-ying in the Place de la Madeleine.

Loo quickly became quite the Parisian dandy and adopted the Anglicised version of his name (Lu Qinzhai). He opened his own store called Laiyuan and Company on Rue Taitbout in 1908, and soon expanded to branches in Beijing and Shanghai. Loo’s talent for forming lasting connections amongst the political and powerful helped him to source fine artworks that had survived recent political upheavals unscathed. This was a period in which Chinese works were gaining popularity in Europe, following the French archaeological mission in the caves at Dunhuang. Loo developed his scholarly knowledge and served to expand the public’s desire for Asian art, especially sculptures and early jades. He became good friends with well-known Sinologists, such as Eduard Chavannes, Victor Segalen, and Paul Pelliot, who wrote catalogues for Loo. Following the outbreak of the First World War, Loo could no longer travel to and from China via Siberia, and instead had to travel through the United States. Here, he discovered a growing market in New York, and chose to establish another shop on Fifth Avenue in 1915. Loo formed relationships with many major American museums, offering gifts to at least six of them between 1915 and 1917. Works that passed through his dealership can now be seen at the Freer Gallery, the Fogg Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts, the Nelson Gallery in Kansas City, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Loo opened the five-storey ‘Pagoda’ at 48 rue Courcelles in Paris in 1928, and filled it with his vast collection of Chinese stone sculptures, murals, and bronzes. Loo’s business peaked between 1933 and 1941, during which time he launched at least one exhibition or publications each year. After the Communist government took over China in 1949, Loo was cut off from his sources and was forced to liquidate much of his stock, leaving the business to his long-time colleague Frank Caro.


Joseph Brummer (1883-1947) was born in Sombor, Hungary, and cultivated an interest in the arts from an early age. He studied art and worked as a sculptor, but it is as a connoisseur and art dealer that he is best remembered.

He moved to Paris and formed a partnership with the Maison Delhomme to sell antiquities at 67 Boulevard Raspail. In November 1910, he set up his own gallery, Maison Joseph Brummer, at the same address and moved to a new location a couple of months later. He called his new gallery ‘Brummer: Objets d’art anciens’. His younger brothers Imre (1889–1928) and Ernest (1891–1964), soon joined him and the gallery was renamed Brummer Frères: Curiosités. The brothers worked in Paris for two years, before Joseph and Imre emigrated to New York in 1914, where they opened a gallery on 57th Street

Joseph’s Paris gallery closed after the First World War and in 1921 he moved to New York full-time, becoming one of the pre-eminent dealers of his time, specialising in medieval and Renaissance European art, and Classical, Ancient Egyptian, African, and pre-Columbian objects. He also hosted exhibitions of modern painters. Joseph built up an extraordinary private collection during this time, a major portion of which was bought by the Metropolitan Museum of Art on his death in 1947. Much of his remaining collection was sold in 1949 at Parke-Bernet Galleries.

The inventory card records that Brummer purchased this stele in November 1923, and is stamped to indicate that it was included in the third auction of Joseph’s collection at Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 8-9 June 1949, Lot 419. However, the stele must not have sold at this time.

Born in former Yugoslavia, Ernest Brummer (1891–1964) moved to Paris to study art history at the Sorbonne and the École du Louvre, where he studied with Salomon Reinach, who had recently been appointed director of the Musée des Antiquités Nationales. Later, with his brothers, Joseph (1883–1947) and Imre (1895–1928), he opened an antiquities shop.

Ernest remained in Paris after Joseph and Imre left for the United States in 1914 at the beginning of the First World War. The gallery would remain at 3, boulevard Raspail until the early 1920s, when Ernest would relocate it to 36, rue de Miromesnil, after Ernest and Joseph had a falling out. After the war, Joseph opened a second shop at 203 bis, boulevard Saint Germain. The brothers were reconciled by 1924 and participated in a transatlantic partnership until Joseph's death in 1947. After joining the business in Paris, Ernest travelled extensively throughout Europe to acquire works of art for the gallery. The Brummers initially dealt in African tribal arts before branching out into ancient, medieval, contemporary French, and pre-Columbian art.

Carl Christoph Friedrich Bernoulli (1897-1981) was born in Basel on 2 October 1897, son of librarian Carl Christoph Bernoulli and Anna Bertha. He began studying law in Basel in Zurich in 1917, but soon switched to philosophy, music history and German literary history. He completed his doctorate on The Music of Romanticism in 1921. That same year, he and his father founded the music publisher ‘Edition Bernoulli’ in Berlin. He also worked as a volunteer in the publishing house of The Frankfurter Zeitung and was co-editor of philosophical works. He married Alice Meisel (1902-1982) in March 1926, and they had two sons: Carl Christoph (1929-2011) and Peter Daniel (1936-2007). From then on, Bernoulli began to focus on the art trade and interior design. His house on Holbeinstrasse became the meeting place of an international circle of celebrities in the cultural sphere, and served as a point of contact for those displaced through the Second World War.

He began trading art after meeting the dealer Curt Valentin in Berlin, and selling two Picassos for him in 1921 in the space of one day. Bernoulli established a long friendship with Valentin and another dealer Alex Vömel, and also served as a keeper of Fluchtgut for many of those who emigrated via his house. He organised several exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Basel and Kunsthalle Basel, where he served as honorary delegate for exhibitions in 1950-1951. He worked on establishing many museums: one for Collection Baur, Geneva (1963-1964), the Jüdische Museum der Schweiz in the old town of Basel (1966), the Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig (1966), and a museum in the Stadtmühle Murten (1976-1977). Bernoulli died in Rheinfelden on 9 August 1981 and is buried in the cemetery at Hörnli.