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Auction: 23004 - Ancient and British Coins - Featuring the 'White Rose' Collection
Lot: 638

Roman Empire, Claudius (41-54), 'DE BRITANN' AV Aureus, struck AD 46-47, Rome, TI CLAVD CAESAR AVG P M TR P VI IMP XI, laureate head right, rev. DE BRITANN on architrave, triumphal arch surmounted by an equestrian statue of the Emperor left, between two trophies, 7.57g [116.8grns], 7h (Cohen 17; BMC 32 (Rome); Lyon 52; RIC I², 33; Calicó 349; Von Kaenel, type 27; CNR XIV, pp. 51; cf. C Canessa [Le Musée VI, 1909], "Le trésor monétaire de Boscoreale", pp. 259-265), neatly centred on a pleasingly round flan, even rub to high points softened by residually brilliance in recesses which are further accentuated by that distinctive reddish 'burn' of Boscoreale tone, strictly very fine, but one of the most important coins in the entire British series delineating the Claudian subjugation of Britannia whilst simultaneously being pedigreed to the Roman world's most famous disaster at Pompeii; an OUTSTANDINGLY desirable offering for numismatists and historical custodians alike, unseen at commerce for over 80 YEARS

Provenance

Spink, by private treaty, 8 April 1942 - £12.0.0 [with this ticket]

'SSB', cabinet purchased by Spink, Spring 1942

'SSB' is confirmed in the surviving Spink Stock G Inventory Book as belonging to the collection of Sir Samuel Boulton, and thus:
Sir Denis Duncan Harold Owen Boulton, 3rd Baronet and Honorary Equerry to Her Royal Highness Princess Louise († 10 August 1968), a survivor of the torpedoing of RMS Lusitania (Cabin A8, Ticket 20609) on 7 May 1915, and possessor of the collection at time of sale to Spink

Sir Harold Edwin Boulton, 2nd Baronet († 1 June 1935), author of the 'The Skye Boat Song', and painted by Bassano in the National Portrait Gallery

~ thence by descent ~
Sir Samuel Bagster Boulton, 1st Baronet († 27 April 1918)

Samuel was buying in the decade before his decease, with auction pedigrees from Martinetti (November 1907); Sir John Evans (May 1909); W C Hazlitt (July 1909); and private transactions from H. Hoffman (1891) and E J Seltman (1894-1920). Following his stint as Vice-President of the London Chamber of Commerce (1893-1898), he was created a Baronet in 1905. Of his seven children, Harold would inherit the Baronetcy and daughter Mabel, better known to history as Mrs. St. Clair Stobart, would be a leading suffragette and founder of Women's Sick and Wounded Convoy Corps (WSWCC) that saw action in Serbia (1912) and the Western Front during the Great War.
~ Signor de Prisco, excavations in the bath-house and wine-press rooms, 13 April 1895 ~

Boscoréale Hoard, "Villa della Pisanella", TPQ circa 24 August AD79



Between Autumn 1894 and April 1895, workers on the land of Signor de Prisco, conducted excavations of a Roman villa sited in the environs of the famously buried city of Pompeii. Accounts vary as to the precise location of the subsequent discovery, although a cellar in the bath-house or in the wine-press room have both been tendered as the hiding spot of a carbonized wooden trunk housing the extraordinary treasure of 109 pieces of gold and silver plate and as many as 1,000 Roman gold aureii. The coins, rather telling, date from the Republic through the early Empire and up to mere weeks of issue before the Vesuvian Eruption so vividly documented by Pliny the Younger.


The intense heat from the volcanic ash, lava and pyroclastic flows left nearly all of the gold coins with a distinctive reddish purple discoloration which has come to be known, rather appropriately as “Boscoreale tone”. Unfortunately, given the haste by which the trove was extracated and removed to Paris to be offered to the Louvre, no formal study of the entire trove of Boscoreale coins was made before they were dispersed into the market, with only Canessa's 1909 listing alongside the distinctive patination that reveals their true pedigree. Fortunately in this exceedingly rare instance, Spink archival documentation and family genealogy for the distinguished Boulton line brings this coin back to with a decade of the hoard's recovery, and for which the deepest recesses of the flan still bear that indellible red 'volcanic scorching' from the most famous natural disaster of the Ancient world.

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Sold for
£15,000

Starting price
£3500