English coin collector Henry Perigal Borrell devoted his entire life to numismatics. Born into a watchmaker's family, he was educated in London and went to the Ottoman Empire, where he settled in Smyrna, one of the oldest Greek cities in Asia Minor. Borrell maintained contacts with England, selling archaeological finds to collectors. For example, he sold a fragment of a statue to William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, a bronze head of Apollo. The statue, discovered in Cyprus, was badly damaged during transportation, and later the head came to Borrell, and today it is in the British Museum.
The numismatist deeply studied the history of ancient coins, published a number of articles in the journals Revue Numismatique and Numismatic Chronicle - the latter was published by the Royal Numismatic Society, of which he became a member in 1839. He wrote an important article on the coins of the city of Andeda in ancient Pisidia, and in 1841 a publication was published devoted to coins with the inscription OKOKLIEON. He also wrote for German and French periodicals.
After Borrell's death, his collection was sold at auction by Sotheby and Wilkinson in 1851, and two years later his numismatic library was auctioned off. The British Museum has more than 2,000 coins, most of which were found in Asia Minor, in the Greek colonies.
Source:
britishmuseum.org
