A Renaissance salt cellar in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford will be returned to the family of the collector Emma Budge, who died in 1937, after the UK Spoliation Advisory Panel concluded that the piece was the subject of a forced sale in the 1930s. The salt cellar was left to the museum in 2012 by the late silver dealer Michael Wellby as part of a gift of almost 500 pieces. It was put up for sale shortly after the death of Budge—who was Jewish—at the Graupe auction house in Berlin, and was sold again in the city in 1943. After the war, the piece was sold at Christie’s Amsterdam in 1994 for 8,625 guilders. It is thought that Wellby acquired the piece at that auction or shortly afterwards.
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'Museum to return silver to Jewish collector’s heirs'