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- Charles Ernest Russell
- Also known as
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Charles Ernest Russell
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primary name: Russell, Charles Ernest
- Details
- individual; collector; New Zealander; British; Male
- Life dates
- 1866-1960
- Address
- 23 Rutland Gate, SW7
- Biography
- Born in New Zealand which he left as a child. Always an enthusiastic collector; starting with English and Irish glass, English porcelain, English 18th century furniture, mezzotints and watercolours, and English and Dutch oil paintings of the 17th and 18th centuries. He began to collect Chinese porcelain in the 1920s with a particular interest in early Ming blue and white. He joined the Oriental Ceramic Society in 1928 and from 1933 when membership of the Society was enlarged to include all those interested in Oriental ceramics, he served as a member of Council.
His publications included articles in "Old Furniture" and "The Collector". Author of the 1926 volume on 'English mezzotint portraits and their states', which was cast as an addendum to Chaloner Smith, and was based on his own collection. Some of his mezzotint portraits passed as a gift to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
His collection included one of the famous Yuan blue and white vases in the Percival David Collection imported from Peking by his friend The Hon Mountstuart W. Elphinstone (q.v.)
- Bibliography
- R. L. Hobson, B. Rackham, W. King, 1931, pp 161-201; "Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society", vol. 32 (1959- 60), p. ix; obituary, Soame Jenyns. Stacey Pierson, "Collectors, Collections and Museums: The Field of Chinese Ceramics in Britain, 1560-1960", 2007, pp 99, 100, 124, 144, 145, 146, 147, 151, 159, 174, 194.