Gorer v Lever - National Museums Liverpool

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Ezekiel Edgar, but seems to have inverted the order certainly by the time heentered business and the original name of the firm S. Gorer & Son, soon becamesimply Gorer as the business became more successful. Again, although Edgarwas married at Hampstead Synagogue in 1902, there is no evidence that he waspracticing. His wife, Rachel Alice Cohen, known as Rée, had trained at the SladeSchool of Art as a sculptor and was a close friend of, and correspondent with, thewriter and poet Edith Sitwell (18871964), as were her sons, Geoffrey, Peter andRichard. 75 This longstanding relationship with Edith Sitwell provides a goodexample of how well the Gorer’s had assimilated into upperclass English life, asdoes the education of their sons, two of whom attended Charterhouse, the third,Westminster and all of whom went on to Cambridge and distinguished careers. 76In business Gorer’s emulation of Duveen can be seen in the way in which heattempted to manipulate the market – in his case for Chinese works of art andporcelain in particular. His promotion of the Bennett Collection is a case in point,but he attempted to replicate the effect with other collections, notably that ofGeorge R. Davies (Fig.9), which he acquired in 1913 and which wasaccompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue and the Henry Sampsoncollection, consisting of 943 pieces of predominantly Qing porcelain and75See Victoria Glendinning, Edith Sitwell: A Unicorn Among Lions, Oxford, 1981.76Geoffrey Gorer (190585) was a writer and social anthropologist, Peter (190761), animmunologist and Richard (191394), a horticulturalist.26
considered to be the finest private collection’ in America, which he purchased inJanuary 1914 for an estimated £220,000. 77Fig.9. Pair of Gourdshaped vases decorated in underglaze cobalt blue, from the George R. Davies Collection.He also made newsworthy purchases at Christie’s in June 1914, paying 4,800guineas for a famille noire beaker vase, the highest price ever paid for such apiece in England and 4,400 guineas for another beaker with yellow ground. 78This continued his advocacy of brilliant and eyecaching Qing porcelains, whichhe had attempted to boost a few years earlier with the publication of his (andJames F. Blacker’s) Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, produced byantiquarian booksellers Bernard Quaritch in a finely illustrated twovolume77George Reynolds Davies (18441918), was a Cheshire cotton merchant. HenrySampson (18381914), was President of Alden Sampson & Sons, oilcloth manufacturers in NewYork. See ‘Sale of a Porcelain Collection (From Our Correspondent)’, The Times, 17 January,1914, p.7 and ‘Art Notes. Sampson Collection of Chinese Porcelains to be Shown Here’, NewYork Times, 16 January, 1914, p.8.78‘High Prices for Porcelain – 4,800 guineas for a Chinese Beaker’, The Times, 18 June,1914, p.10.27
Page 1 and 2: Gorer v Lever: Edgar Gorer and Will
Page 3 and 4: English ports and growing seaside r
Page 5 and 6: powderblue with famille verte ena
Page 7 and 8: China, Japan and India. There is no
Page 9 and 10: Paris, which he firmly rejected. 25
Page 11 and 12: Fig. 4. Supper set from the Sir Wil
Page 13 and 14: Fry. 37 Sometime in June, Lever dec
Page 15 and 16: Fig. 6. Hulme Hall this view was
Page 17 and 18: executed in red and black ink on fo
Page 19 and 20: so peremptorily, literally on the d
Page 21 and 22: during the meeting but Gorer, who w
Page 23 and 24: shipped most of the remaining part
Page 25: prejudices that ran through British
Page 29 and 30: Bond Street. 83 It seems likely tha
Page 31 and 32: New York Times of 8 th May carried
Page 33 and 34: James Henry Duveen described Edgar

Gorer v Lever - National Museums Liverpool

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