Magazine story leads to more campus treasure

BY KARL RHODES
Editor, Richmond Alumni Magazine

The editor of Richmond Alumni Magazine recovered this 1852 silver sugar bowl, donated to Richmond College in the 1890s.

Richmond Alumni Magazine helped recover another piece of the Thomas Silver Collection that disappeared from the University more than 30 years ago. The recovered piece is an 1852 sugar bowl that once belonged to Mary Thomas, wife of the tobacco magnate who financed the reopening of Richmond College after the Civil War.

Mary Thomas donated the silver collection to Richmond College in the 1890s, probably to be displayed in the James Thomas Jr. Memorial Museum and Art Hall. The museum closed in 1914, but Richmond Alumni Magazine has been tracking down artifacts from its scattered collection.

The magazine's first discovery was an 1853 silver chalice that had belonged to James Thomas. The chalice, the sugar bowl and an 1895 silver plate were mixed in with the personal possessions of Stuart Wheeler, associate professor of classical studies, who died in 2006 after teaching at the University for nearly 40 years.

Green Valley Auctions, the company hired to liquidate Wheeler's antiques, returned the chalice to the University in October, but Green Valley already had sold the sugar bowl and plate. The company eventually recovered the sugar bowl from a consignment shop, but Green Valley could not recover the plate because it had been resold for cash. To compensate for the loss, Wheeler's estate gave UR the $210 the plate brought at auction.

The chalice and sugar bowl are on display at the Virginia Baptist Historical Society, which adjoins Boatwright Memorial Library.

In addition to recovering the Thomas silver pieces, the magazine has found two matching vases that appear in a photograph of the old museum. The large Cantonese vases probably came from the Rev. E. Z. Simmons, a missionary to Canton, China, who donated vases to the museum in 1893.

More than 100 years later, Jane Thorpe Stockman, W'58, rescued the vases from the basement of Millhiser Gymnasium and had them professionally restored. Stockman, executive director of alumni affairs at the time, realized the vases were antiques but did not know they came from the old museum. She placed them in the alumni office when Jepson Alumni Center opened in 1997, and they remain among the furnishings there.

To join the magazine's campus treasure hunt, visit magazine.richmond.edu/treasure or contact the editor, Karl Rhodes, at 289-8059.