Icklingham Bronzes

Icklingham Bronzes

In 1991, John and Rosemary Browning of Icklingham, England filed a lawsuit in Manhattan against Ariadne Galleries Inc., claiming that 16 bronze pieces the gallery had sold were looted from Roman ruins under the Brownings' wheat fields during the winter of 1981-1982.

After the theft, five men were arrested but were not charged due to a lack of evidence. In 1982, however, Dr. Ian Longworth, the keeper of Roman-British antiquities at the British Museum, was shown photographs of 16 bronzes said to be in the hands of a British dealer who indicated that they had come from the Brownings' farm. The objects later resurfaced in New York and all except one went on display in the Ariadne Gallery by 1989.

In 1988, Ariadne owner Torkom Demirjian offered one of the pieces – a second-century Roman figure of a leopard with inlaid silver – to curator Marion True of the J. Paul Getty Museum for a sum of USD$600,000. True checked with the British Museum and was told the piece was one of the 16 looted in the early 1980's from the Brownings' farm. She decided not to buy it, explaining her reason to Demirjian, who then sold the leopard and the other bronzes to the New York financier Leon Levy and his wife, Shelby White.

In 1993, Demirjian settled the Browning lawsuit, and Levy and White agreed to bequeath the looted bronzes to the British Museum.

"A bequest to a third party is not really my idea of what to do when you're caught with your trousers down, but the goods will come back to their country of origin," John Browning told the Financial Times. "That is what is important."

As recently as 2008, John Browning reported attempts by nighthawks (illicit metal detectorists) to further loot his fields due to widespread local knowledge of the bronzes' discovery.

16

Sculpture – statues, carvings, bronzes, reliefs, figurines

Romano-British

Leon Levy and Shelby White

British Museum

UK

Damien Huffer

Jason Felch