Pile of Coins

André Bircher (1838-1926), Cairo, Egypt, no. 312, by 1926;

By inheritance to his heirs, Mesdames Bircher and Serveux, Cairo, 1926-February 17, 1932 [1];

Purchased from Mesdames Bircher and Serveux, through Dr. William Frederic Badè, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1932.

NOTES:

[1] According to Dr. William Frederic Badé, in a letter to J. C. Nichols, Nelson-Atkins Trustee, January 26, 1932, “the so-called André Bircher Collection…is now being dispersed of by two old ladies of German origin…. One is the second wife of the deceased André Bircher. They have come to a pass where they have to defray their living expenses by the sale (in small lots) of the collection.” See NAMA Archives, RG80-10 William Rockhill Nelson Trust Records, box 1, folder 7. According to Charles Breasted—whose father James Henry Breasted also bought Egyptian objects from the Bircher collection around the same time—Madame Sevreux was, “an elderly woman…who acts as a curator.” See Charles Breasted, Pioneer to the Past: The Story of James H. Breasted (1943; repr., Chicago: The University of Chicago, 2020), 253.