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- Maurice Cockin
- Also known as
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Maurice Cockin
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primary name: Cockin, Maurice
- Details
- individual; collector; official; British; Male
- Life dates
- 1882-1961
- Biography
- Maurice Stanley Cockin (1882 - 1961) joined the Colonial Service and did two tours of duty as Assistant District Commissioner in southern Nigeria in the years 1908 to 1914, posted to Owo and Ishan, where he formed a collection. He resigned on his marriage and never set foot in Africa again, living henceforth in Mortlake. He served as a captain in the First World War, and was injured. His collection of Nigerian works was formed in Africa. He later, after the death in 1933 of Sir Cecil Armitage (qv), purchased much of his collection which had been formed mainly in the Gold Coast. Cockin retained his interest in the affairs of Nigeria, writing an article in the Journal of the Royal African Society, XXXVII (October 1938), pp.502-3, on ‘Nigeria’s need for a museum’, castigating the British authorities for their failure to do this. Cockin died in 1961, and his collection was inherited by his wife and then their daughter Celia Barclay (qv). It was for many years on loan from her to the BM, and most of it was purchased by the BM in two parts, in 1978 and 1984. It is the most important collection of African objects in the BM formed by a single collector.
See William Fagg in BMQ 1962 announcing a new display 'from a large collection of West African art, mainly from Southern Nigeria and from Ashanti in Ghana, which was formed by the late Mr M.S.Cockin and has been deposited on loan in the British Museum by his daughter, Mrs Gordon Barclay. Many of the Nigerian pieces are in little-known styles from the tribes to the north of Benin among whom Mr Cockin served as an administrator before the First World War.'
- Bibliography
- British Museum Quarterly, September 1962, news supplement p.2
J.B.Donne, ‘The Celia Barclay collection of African art’, The Connoisseur, 180 1972, pp.88-95.