page_title: Edmund de Unger
section_title: Rock crystal
hierarchical_section_title: Edmund de Unger / Keir Collection / Rock crystal
context_page_description: Edmund Robert Anthony de Unger was a Hungarian-born property developer and art collector. In London he built up the Keir Collection, one of the greatest post-war collections of Islamic art, bequeathed in 2008 to the Pergamon Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin. The arrangement for the museum to curate the collection came to an end in July 2012. The collection is now hosted by the Dallas Museum of Art as of May 2014 for a 15-year renewable loan.
context_section_description: Rock crystal artefacts flourished during the Fatimid period in Egypt (969-1171). Because of the difficulty of working with the very hard medium, only the caliph and his immediate court could afford these objets d'art, which varied in size from small animal forms to large vessels. In 1068, however, the large collection of treasures in the Caliph's palace in al-Qahira (now part of modern-day Cairo) was dispersed throughout the medieval world as the result of a revolt by the unpaid army. Very few items from the reportedly large collection survive. Several of these rare sculpted rock crystals came to form parts of reliquaries in Medieval church treasuries, in mountings made for gold and precious stones. De Unger acquired several rock crystal pieces from this period for his collection including a fine vessel decorated with palmettes, set in an elaborate gold casing with handles formed of foliage and winged dragons. Other smaller items in the collection include several bottles, possibly intended for dispensing scent, and a bead in the form of a crouching hare, possibly intended as a charm.
  In October 2008 an 11th-century Fatimid rock crystal ewer was acquired for the Keir Collection at a public auction in Christie's by de Unger's son, Richard, for over £3 million. Set in a medieval Italian gold and enamel mount, the ewer had earlier in the year been offered for auction in Somerset as a nineteenth-century French claret decanter with an estimated price of between £100 and £200. Islamic art experts present at the auction recognized the rarity of the artifact, which sold for just over £200,000. Subsequently the owner withdrew the object from sale, placing it for auction at Christie's, who gave an evaluation with a starting price of £3 million, expecting a higher price, despite the financial crisis at the time. When de Unger requested an export order so that the ewer could go on display in Berlin, the UK government sought its own evaluation from Sotheby's, who returned a figure of £20 million, beyond the means of any public British art collection. With a change of government, Sotheby's figure was accepted and the ewer, one of only a very small number of surviving rock glass vessels of this type, is now on display in the Pergamon Museum of Islamic Art.
caption: 11th century Fatimid rock crystal ewer in Italian gold and enamel mount, acquired in 2008 for over £3 million for the Keir Collection
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