Shefton's father was one of the first academics fired from Cologne University when the Nazis took over. The family was able to flee to England, when Oxford offered the father a position there. And it was at Oxford that Brian Shefton later took a degree.
At Newcastle University Brian Shefton was responsible for building the collection at their Greek Museum. The material Shefton collected resulted in, according to his obituary
a collection which included an extensive range of pottery, covering all the major periods of Greek history from the Mycenaean to the Hellenistic; metal artefacts, including domestic items, jewellery, figurines of animals and arms and armour; and a range of sculpture, including a figure of Nike which had once belonged to John Ruskin. In 1956 the university’s Greek Museum opened its doors.
The result was the leading collection in its field, in the north of England. The same obituary -- I think from The Telegraph -- tells an interesting story about Shefton's collecting:
In 2004, after a quest lasting some 30 years, Shefton reunited two halves of a stone lion’s head — the upper portion of a waterspout on a temple built by Greek colonists living in the vicinity of Metaponto in southern Italy — which had broken apart after the building’s collapse in around 300 AD and remained separated ever since.
During the 1970s Shefton had accepted the right half of the head for the museum after it was bought from Christie’s and then lent by Lionel Jacobson, who ran a tailoring business in the north-east. A few years later Shefton was browsing through a catalogue of an exhibition of the collection of the Zurich banker Dr Leo Mildenberg and spotted what he thought could be the left half. When the exhibition opened at Cleveland, Ohio, he contacted its curator and asked her to take a cast of the break line of the artefact and send it to him. It was an exact fit.
Demonstrating that the halves made a whole, he persuaded Dr Mildenberg to bequeath his half to Newcastle. Mildenberg died in 2001 and the two halves of the lion’s head were reunited three years later.
Professor Brian Shefton left a wife and daughter when he died on January 25, 2012)
During the 1970s Shefton had accepted the right half of the head for the museum after it was bought from Christie’s and then lent by Lionel Jacobson, who ran a tailoring business in the north-east. A few years later Shefton was browsing through a catalogue of an exhibition of the collection of the Zurich banker Dr Leo Mildenberg and spotted what he thought could be the left half. When the exhibition opened at Cleveland, Ohio, he contacted its curator and asked her to take a cast of the break line of the artefact and send it to him. It was an exact fit.
Demonstrating that the halves made a whole, he persuaded Dr Mildenberg to bequeath his half to Newcastle. Mildenberg died in 2001 and the two halves of the lion’s head were reunited three years later.
Professor Brian Shefton left a wife and daughter when he died on January 25, 2012)
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