In good overall condition, the largely in-tact human skull dating to at least the late eighteenth century, displaying a marvellous aged patina and colour, the jaw articulated, retaining many of the original teeth and surviving from The Horniman Collection; and ex Dick Moy’s inventory.
The Horniman Collection; Ex Dick Moy.
Once a part of the Horniman Collection, this skull was purchased by Dick Moy from the wife of a former curator. Born in Brixton in 1932, Dick Moy has his own blue plaque and was a wonderful antiques dealer, businessman and restaurateur. He always wanted to run his own business but at Haberdasher Aske’s School, in New Cross, was keener on books, natural history and the country. This later led him to buy a Kent farmhouse that he filled with old furniture, children, and friends for cricket-and-strawberry parties, and his shop at Spread Eagle Yard was widely known to television and film buyers looking for period kit and costume, or collectors of anything from Roman pottery lamps to pictures, glass, silver, weapons, walking sticks, books and autograph letters, old photos, furniture, theatrical and other ephemera, African masks or a wandering Chinese bronze. Over 300 people including civic leaders packed his funeral, tacit recognition that his death marked the end of an era in Greenwich that his ebullient personality helped to define.
The Horniman Museum and Gardens is a museum in Forest Hill, London, England. Commissioned in 1898, it opened in 1901 and was designed by Charles Harrison Townsend in the Modern Style. It has displays of anthropology, natural history and musical instruments, and is known for its large collection of taxidermied animals.
The colour to this example elevates it beyond many of the other examples seen, and it is a museum worthy piece, just as it was before. Although some may find selling human bones unethical it is completely legal providing the specimen is antique and not displayed in a public environment without a license, rather only privately. In our opinion the stories that this wonderful object tells deserve to be told.
A top drawer example with a wonderful provenance.
The skull remains in good overall order; please view the photographs for a full visual reference. There are some teeth missing. It displays an outstanding patination.
By appointment only.
