THE FORANI COLLECTION IS FOR SALE

The Forani Collection is up for sale. The owners, now elderly and feeling themselves no longer able to extend and develope the full potential of the Collection, have decided to offer it for sale in its entirety as a single entity with all related documentation including possession of this internet site and exclusive copyright ownership of John Noone's two volume, eight part book: "Turtle Tortoise, Image and Symbol" now published as an illustrated text in an electronic edition on <Amazon.com>. The proposed price is USD$200,000 and the owners may be contacted by email at < foranicollection@gmail.com >

Forani Collection
Cat. No: CH74-1016
Turtle head and neck fragment of ceramic. Arawak people, Taino culture, excavated at Las Calettas, Dominican Republic. L 5.50 cm.

Photo: John Noone IMG_2208.jpg

THE FORANI COLLECTION OF THE TURTLE/TORTOISE IN ART AND ARTEFACT

The Forani Collection was begun by Christine Forani in January 1970 and, following her death six years later, was continued by her daughter Isabelle Forani.

Christine Forani (born Madeleine Bonnecompagnie in Belgium 22 June 1916, died in Thailand 16 January 1976) was a Belgian sculptor, known in the art world as Madeleine Christine Forani, who on the death of her husband Antonio Forani in 1966 gave up her art in order to take his place at the head of a family-business in Brussels. Though raised in a context of conventional postage-stamp and Liebig card collections, she had never before 1970 been a collector of anything, and her interest in turtles had been limited to a tortoise called Apple which lived in the garden of her house in Brussels and to a surrealist construction, using two stuffed tortoises, which she had created in collaboration with Salvador Dali in Paris in 1965.

What prompted her to start a collection of turtle-related objects was her recent close relationship with Tom Harrisson whom she had met for the first time in March the year before at the offices of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) at Morges in Switzerland. She had been there to attend the presentation of one of her sculptures to Jean-Paul Harroy, former Governor General of Ruanda-Urundi and  until 1966 President of the European Committee for the Conservation of Nature. Tom Harrisson had been there to attend the first working meeting of the Marine Turtle Specialist Group (MTSG) of the Survival Service Commission (SSC).

Tom Harrisson (born in Argentina 26 September 1911, died in Thailand 16 January 1976) was a man of many parts, known for his work in ornithology, sociology, anthropology, ethnology and animal-conservation. He was an Englishman, one of the founders in 1938 of Mass Observation Ltd, now the Mass Observation Archive at Sussex University, Curator of Sarawak Museum from 1947 to 1967 and afterwards adviser to Brunei Museum, Research Associate at Cornell University from 1967 to 1970 and from 1974 Visiting Fellow at Sussex University.

No doubt the couple's initial attraction to each other was the part each had played on active service during the war. Christine, with her husband, Antonio Forani, and her parents, Lucie and Nestor Bonnecompagnie, had worked for the Belgian Resistance during the occupation, and the name Christine, which she preferred, was in fact her undercover name. After the liberation of Belgium she worked for Belgian Intelligence and was sent to England for training as a parachutist with the Special Allied Airborne Reconnaissance Forces. It was attached to the 7th US Army on a mission for the repatriation of concentration-camp prisoners that she arrived in Dachau the day after the camp was liberated. For her engagement in the Resistance during the Occupation she was awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre. As for Tom, he was awarded a Distinguished Service Order for his part in organizing native insurgency against the Japanese in Borneo in 1945. Tom had no European culture and spoke no language other than English, but Christine, whose mother-tongue was French, spoke English, German, Italian and Spanish.

In August 1969, following their first encounter, Christine invited Tom to her summer home in Cannes, and met him off the train with a good luck turtle-charm in recognition of his election as vice-president of MTSG. What became of that turtle is not known, but for Christine what started in this way, as a casual and lighthearted gesture to amuse a man she found interesting, became by the following year a serious and absorbing hobby. It began in Japan where she spent the New Year staying with her daughter, Isabelle Forani, who lived in Kyoto, and continued on the trip she then made by way of Hong Kong, Singapore, Bali, Fiji, Tahiti and Mexico to New York. Tom had accompanied her to Japan but from there had gone to Brunei and on from there to Cornell University in Ithaca NY from where he joined her in New York at the end of March. The first pieces in the collection, some forty or so turtle-form objects, had been acquired by Christine during her trip, an assortment for the most part of costume jewelry and household ornaments, but including a 19th century Chinese water-dripper from Bali and a traditional tanoa bowl for mixing kava from Fiji.

Back in Europe her collecting continued and, with Isabelle in Japan enlisted as a turtle-collector too, the living-room of the house in Brussels was gradually inundated with turtle related objects of every description. In January 1971 Christine and Tom were married and in February made another short stay with Isabelle in Japan before Tom's annual visit to Brunei museum. Christine went with him to Brunei by way of Sabah, then together they travelled through New Guinea and the Trobiand Islands, the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), to Santiago de Chile and Easter Island, to Peru, Bolivia and Mexico before reaching New York at the end of March as they had done the year before. This time together they had collected even more turtle-objects en route, half as many again, as on Christine's previous trip.

Though by mid-1971, more than 400 turtle-related items had been amassed, no comprehensive record was kept, and it wasn’t until Christmas Day 1972 that it was decided to begin a register of new acquisitions. For the next three years the collection grew at the same hectic pace, covering more and more of the furniture, walls and floor of the Brussels house. All the turtles were always displayed, new arrivals being squeezed in wherever they could fit and left there to disconcert visitors and gather dust in an ever increasing jumble. That something should be done to protect and preserve the collection was evident, but the numbers increased so rapidly that, by the time it was recognized that the need was urgent, the job was too big for anyone to take on.

On 16 January 1976, while on a trip together in Burma and Thailand, Christine and Tom were killed in a road accident near Bangkok, and Isabelle was obliged to move to Brussels to take over the family business. In the house she found the turtle collection in a sorry state and badly in need of salvaging. At least a dozen varieties of bread-turtles, an extraordinary collection in themselves, had been eaten away by weevils, and scores of other turtles made of fragile or perishable materials were in ruins and had to be jettisoned. Apart from a fragmentary register kept on scraps of paper, odd notes and a few receipts, there was no documentation at all, and the background information was difficult to reconstitute. Painstakingly, however, in the months that followed, Isabelle's husband, John Noone, reviewed and catalogued the entire collection, cleaned and restored objects where necessary and stored them all away

For two or three years after Christine's death, the collecting stopped and, when gradually it started again, it was at a much slower pace. Though gifts were always accepted whatever their nature, a new emphasis was placed on the character of the pieces collected. Whereas before 1976 objects of every description were acquired, anything from a souvenir ashtray to a Han dynasty candlestick, additions after that date were chosen for their specific as well as their representational interest, their cultural context and symbolic significance. Today the collection consists of over 1,800 pieces and they come from all over the world, from Western and Eastern Europe, North and South America, the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa and India, Central and South East Asia, the Far East and the Pacific. There are Ashanti gold-weights, Burmese opium-weights, Chinese seals and snuff-bottles, Japanese ukiyo-e and netsuke, a Turkish puppet, a Spanish spittoon, a Chimu rattle, a Sioux calumet, a Sepik stool, a Dogon lock, a Masai mask, a Polynesian bark-painting, a Kayan buckle, a Senufo thumb-piano and a Brunei kettle. There are bathmats, bells, bottle-openers, clocks, coins, corkscrews, compasses, food-moulds, ink-pots, nutcrackers, pill-boxes, pin-cushions, postage-stamps, roof-tiles, salt-cellars, teapots, toys, trivets and tureens. They range in size from a pair of 19th century Japanese bronze jars, three quarters of a metre in height, to a pair of gold ear-rings from the United States depicting a turtle only one centimetre from nose to tail. They are of all shapes, all styles, and are made of all kinds of materials, of gold, amber, silver, ivory, jade, porcelain, paper, wax, ceramic, coral, crystal, enamel, straw, leather, lacquer, tin, iron, nacre, agate, horn, bone, brass, bronze, rubber, canvas, pumice, chocolate, marzipan, bread, soap, alabaster and ciment. Many of them are made of tortoiseshell including a 19th century lorgnette from Europe and warrior-armbands from New Guinea. There are real turtles stuffed and preserved to serve as key-ring ornaments and ashtrays, carapaces built into masks from Africa and New Guinea, and a number of complete shells turned to use as flasks, musical instruments and boxes.

The Forani collection is not exhibited and can only be seen as selected pieces illustrated on this site and in the book "Turtle Tortoise: Image and Symbol" by John Noone. This book, now published on Amazon Kindle, is in two volumes - Volume 1: The West, and Volume 2: the East - and each volume is divided into four parts. Volume 1 forms a chronological sequence of European culture from prehistory through Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery and Enlightenment, of scientific and cultural expansion, to the present, while Volume 2 takes the form of individual studies of the specific cultures of India, China, Japan, Oceania and America. Together they constitute an in-depth coverage of the turtle/tortoise, real and symbolic, as it appears in life and religion, art and myth, throughout the world from the earliest times, and items from the Forani Collection are there discussed along with turtle representations and turtle-related objects from museums, galleries, libraries, monuments, temples, churches and palaces around the world.

John Noone's eight-part electronic book on the meaning of the turtle in art and culture may be found at the Amazon Bookshop using the following links:

TURTLE TORTOISE, IMAGE AND SYMBOL,
Vol 1 THE WEST, Part 1:
Natural History, Prehistory, Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece and Rome.
USA http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BSUXH42
UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BSUXH42
FRANCE http://www.amazon.fr/dp/B00BSUXH42

TURTLE TORTOISE, IMAGE AND SYMBOL.
Vol 1 THE WEST, Part 2:
Medieval Europe and the Renaissance.
USA http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BSV4GQE
UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BSV4GQE
FRANCE http://www.amazon.fr/dp/B00BSV4GQE

TURTLE TORTOISE, IMAGE AND SYMBOL.
Vol 1 THE WEST, Part 3:
17th, 18th and 19th century Europe.
USA http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BSV9X3K
UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BSV9X3K
FRANCE http://www.amazon.fr/dp/B00BSV9X3K

TURTLE TORTOISE, IMAGE AND SYMBOL.
Vol 1 THE WEST, Part 4:
Modern Europe and Africa.
USA http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BSVMN0A
UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BSVMN0A
FRANCE http://www.amazon.fr/dp/B00BSVMN0A

TURTLE TORTOISE, IMAGE AND SYMBOL.
Vol 2 THE EAST, Part 1:
India, Indonesia and Nepal.
USA http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BSVV5X6
UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BSVV5X6
FRANCE http://www.amazon.fr/dp/B00BSVV5X6

TURTLE TORTOISE, IMAGE AND SYMBOL.
Vol 2 THE EAST, Part 2:
China, Vietnam and Korea.
USA http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BSW2EJO
UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BSW2EJO
FRANCE http://www.amazon.fr/dp/B00BSW2EJO

TURTLE TORTOISE, IMAGE AND SYMBOL.
Vol 2 THE EAST, Part 3:
Japan.
USA http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BSWA0YK
UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BSWA0YK
FRANCE http://www.amazon.fr/dp/B00BSWA0YK

TURTLE TORTOISE, IMAGE AND SYMBOL.
Vol 2 THE EAST, Part 4:
Oceania, North America and MesoAmerica.
USA http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BSWH674
UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BSWH674
FRANCE http://www.amazon.fr/dp/B00BSWH674