Classic-Hull: the Crofts Collection

When people think about Classical collections – people immediately jump to thinking about Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece.  However, these Classical cultures spread much further than the borders of modern Italy and Greece.

The Crofts Collection at Hull and East Riding Museum is a brilliant example – the collection consists of almost 500 objects (499 if we’re being precise!) from a variety of locations and Classical cultures. 

It includes:

Roman glass jar from Hebron, West Bank

Roman glassware from the Mediterranean (including Israel, The West Bank, Syria, Cyprus and Ukraine)

Bichrome ware jug from Curium, Cyprus

Cypriot pottery (from Cyprus including Lefkosia/Nicosia, Kourion/Curium and Amathus)

Double spouted Roman oil lamp

Roman lamps and lamp fillers (from places such as Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Turkey, Egypt, Israel and the UK)

We are also really lucky because we have a paper archive associated with the collection.  This includes historic object labels that were written for the objects in the early twentieth century as well as letters received by the original collector from antiquity dealers and other collectors.

The paper archive is an amazing resource.  It provides us with lots of extra information about the collection such as how the objects were bought and how they were brought together to form a collection.  It also provides us with a unique insight into the thought process of the collector – why he chose to collect the things he did and the kind of decisions he made (which is pretty cool, because it’s probably as close as we can get to a time machine or being able to chat to him about his collection).

So… who was Crofts?!  We’ll explore that in the next post in this series!