There's often amazing information available from google searches on provenance names. You might stumble across information that shows a collector was especially interested in graphic design and typefaces on which he published a book in Italy in the 1930s before selling his collection during the short-lived post surrender restored Mussolini regime in north Italy 1944-45, and probably the collection was an inspiration for his work. Or an obituary that relates specific travels in Europe in the 1960s. Totally unexpected and random stuff. It's worth putting some effort into searching for possible leads.
A practical example from TODAY. I was looking at a coin in my
collection whose
provenance I
had noted as
-
CNG e250 (23 Feb. 2011) lot 250 ex
- Bank Leu &
Spink & NAC Ceresio 3 (3 Oct.1992) lot 154
But I bought the coin in 2014 so there was a gap to explain. I went into my 2014 purchase records and found I'd actually bought it in a VAauctions sale but not noted in the
provenance presumably as I thought it unimportant. However knowing there's a VAuctions archive, I went in to find the coin. Below its record was noted as "Ivar Gault
collection". I didn't know whether that was between 2011 and 2014, between 1992 and 2011, or prior to 1992. So I went to the
CNG esale records which didn't mention a collector name. Then I went to
ACsearch and put in Ivar Gault. It found a few coins that referenced the same VAuction sale in 2014, which means the collector name was in the most recent period. Then I started googling. I found a website for a Norwegian family ivargault.com but I was sure I
had hit a dead end as the family
history did not include the word "coin", "
roman" or "ancient". Not him for sure. So googled again and this time the next link Ivar Gault Coins was to a LinkedIn page. That gave the
home town of the Ivar Gault (the coin guy!) as Ostfold in Norway. Googled again with Ostfold and up
comes the same website I'd thought a dead end. So I went back to the
home page of the website and found the image
per first pic below. Now I'm getting somewhere as he explicitly includes a link to "Antique Coins" on
his family
home page. That clicked through to a menu for
Roman coins and its subdivisions. Bingo.
So despite the family bio not mentioning a word about the ancient world I'd found the right person. Now I went back to the family bio and read it with renewed interest. Ivar Gault was born in 1947, son of a Norwegian soldier who
met his Scottish mother in Lossiemouth airbase in 1944, and unusually took
his mum's family name. In later life Ivar partnered with another Norwegian war baby, Ernst, this time the son of a
German soldier stationed in Norway and a local woman, who also
met in 1944. The
German father turned into an avowed communist after the war and apparently died of heartbreak for the tragic loss of communism when the
Berlin war came down. Although Ivar only owned my coin for three years, this was interesting enough bio that I am of course now going to mention the
provenance of my coin, a very pretty corn-ear
denarius from the middle of the second Punic war (pic below).
This is a very typical story of how you research collector provenances.