Jewelry Through the Ages: Ancient to Neoclassical

Provenance: 

Mehdi Mahboubian (1921-2005), New York and London.

Patti Cadby Birch Collection (1923-2007), New York, acquired from the above in the 1940s-1970s.

Important Private Collection, New Jersey, acquired from the above in the 1970s.

For a similar necklace see F. Falk, Jewelry From Persia: The Collection of Patti Birch (Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim Exhibition Catalogue), 1974, no. 114.

Patti Birch (1923–2011) was born in New York and raised in France. After returning to the U.S., her portrait was painted by surrealist Man Ray in 1943. She and her husband, Everett B. Birch, whom she met while working at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, established the Patti and Everett B. Birch Foundation. In 2011, the foundation funded two Islamic galleries and educational programs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and also supported conservation projects in Marrakesh. Thomas Campbell, former Director of the Met, noted, “Patti Birch had a long and close affiliation with the Museum's Department of Islamic Art [...] It is fitting that her name will now be linked to several of these new areas and projects, including the galleries related to her beloved Morocco.”

Her jewelry was exhibited in 2000 at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in 1974 at the Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim in Germany. Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage, described her collection as “one of the best collections of Middle Eastern jewelry in the world... Few examples of gold jewelry have survived, since much of it was melted down and reused.” He also noted that she acquired pieces through sponsorship of archaeological excavations in exchange for funding.