Dear Auction People,
Thanks to the social media postings of Mr. Alula Pankhurst, about whom I’ll say more in a bit, I happened to see the notice for the auction on December 1 of the medal—the Imperial Order of the Star of Ethiopia—that belonged to Ras Desta Damtew. According to your information, “the piece comes from the estate of an Italian soldier who was present at the capture of the Prince.”
Which is an interesting way to say the soldier stole it.
According to your own website page on this and information offered on Live Auctioneers, you’ve listed a starting price of €45,000 and the medal is expected to fetch between €60,000 to €90,000.
I respectfully urge you to cancel this event and to persuade the Italian soldier’s estate to hand over the Desta medal.
The Art Newspaper adds:
Desta’s grandchildren are represented by Christopher Marinello, a lawyer and the founder of Art Recovery International, which tracks missing art. Marinello contacted La Galerie Numismatique before the auction asking it to withdraw the medal from sale and facilitate negotiations between the family and the consignor.
In response, Bogdan Stambuliu, who described himself as the auctioneer, wrote in an email that the medal had been sold several times since 1936 and “the provenance is clear and we will not ask the consigner to stop the sale.” The auction house said it and the consignor would be willing to sell the medal to the family for a total of €61,595, including VAT and buyer’s premium.
“These are outrageous, insensitive demands for stolen property with colonial-era provenance,” Marinello says.
Abebaw Ayalew, the director general of the Ethiopian Heritage Authority, also wrote to La Galerie Numismatique before the auction requesting the cancellation of the sale and “that you contact the sellers to arrange for the return of this important looted heritage item to Ethiopia.”
