The collection, which was in private Danish ownership, was first thoroughly examined in the owner’s home. More than 200 artefacts and fragments lying in boxes in the basement, in bookcases and on shelves in the living room as well as in the kitchen, were systematically identified and registered. The extensive inventory that resulted from this work included numerous bronze, limestone and terracotta objects, beads from a necklace, a lapis lazuli scarab and two steatite scrolls. The vast majority of the artefacts were in a superb state of preservation. The collection was characterised by a wide range of Cypriote objects from the Early Bronze Age to the Hellenistic-Roman period, from miniature pieces to large storage vessels. There is no doubt that the Department found the collection very attractive, and a process of applying for funding for the purchase began immediately afterwards. In an application addressed to the University’s then rector in December 1970, the following description of the collection can be found: ‘It is an instructive collection, suitable for a university study collection, with many fine and characteristic representations of ancient ceramic production and other forms of craft, and illuminative of the cultural development on the Mediterranean island where the break between Near Eastern influences and Greek culture is greatest.’
Within a short period, the full amount was obtained to purchase the collection, and as early as February 1971 the purchase was made, and the collection made its way to Odense University at the beginning of March 1971. From the correspondence, it appears that it was of utmost importance to the seller that the items were sold off as a unity, and it was even mentioned that the seller had information about which items had originally been found together. Unfortunately, no archival material has been retained that elaborates on these matters. However, from a later inventory of the entire collection, it appears that the Cypriot artefacts are for the most part reported to have been found at Lapithos in Northern Cyprus and that they were acquired by the seller over a period of time in the 1960s in Nicosia. Unfortunately, this is the closest we get to determining the objects’ original provenance and context.
In the period between 1973 and 1974, additional items were acquired, in the form of a sizable collection of artefacts on loan from Funen Stift’s Museum, now Museum Odense, and from the National Museum of Denmark. Among the objects were Greek black-figure and black-glazed pottery, terracotta figurines, small marble sculptures, fragments of Roman frescoes and some fine Egyptian faience objects. In 1978, an initiative was launched to catalogue the study collection, and with a grant from the Research Council and the Carlsberg Foundation, the Corpus of Cypriote Antiquities 22. The Vase Collection in the Odense University by Anne Marie Nielsen and Lone Wriedt Sørensen was published, albeit with some delay, in Studies in Mediterranean Archeology Vol. XX:22, Jonsered, 2001.
In this respect, the purpose of the publication was to publish the entire study collection’s corpus of pottery together, thus the authors also included elements of the non-Cypriot material that had been acquired from the Funen Stift’s Museum. In 2004, the collection was once again slated for publication when Karin Nys and Paul Åström included the Cypriot material from Odense in a combined publication of Cypriot artefacts in Danish public collections. This became Cypriote Antiquities in Public Collections in Denmark, Corpus of Cypriote Antiquities 23. Studies in Mediterranean Archeology Vol. XX:23. Sävedalen, 2004.