THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 2, 1994 TAG: 9411020471
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALEX MARSHALL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines
For two decades, the fantastic figurines were wrapped in a towel inside a shoe box in the back of a safe. A few employees of the school system knew the items were pretty old and from somewhere in Latin America. They weren't considered particularly important. Or very valuable.
But Sharon L. Hill, director of art education for Norfolk schools, got curious: Maybe it was the beauty of the animal and human shapes. She read books on pre-Colombian art. She called experts.
After a year and a half of research, she discovered that the 19 shiny objects were gold, not brass as she had first thought. That they were 900 to 1,200 years old. That they were made by tribes that lived in what is now Costa Rica, Panama and northern Colombia. And that they are worth anywhere from $125,000 to $500,000.
The figurines are no longer in a shoe box. They're on loan to the Chrysler Museum, which will soon put them on display.
Educational programs for Norfolk students will be designed around the figurines.
That was the wish of the donor when he gave them to the school system in 1971. He is still alive, but has asked to remain anonymous. Hill would not reveal who he is - even to the City Council, whose curiosity was piqued when Hill showed slides of the objects at Tuesday's meeting.
``Why does he want to remain anonymous?'' Councilman Mason C. Andrews asked. ``Why doesn't he want to take credit for this?''
The figurines are fantastic: chieftains with headdresses grasping rattles; a leopard with a human limb in its mouth; a sleek frog; a turtle with two heads. They range from the size of a thumb to a large hand. Since they are gold, they are heavy.
In the early 1970s, the figurines were occasionally shown at public schools and trotted out to classrooms. Then they were put away inside an old safe in the school administration building and forgotten, Hill said.
When she took her job eight years ago, her predecessor mentioned in passing that there were some metal art objects stored in the vault.
A year and a half ago, she went searching for them. ``I looked into them kind of on a whim,'' Hill said.
She said that people in the office where the safe was located told her, ``Oh, you mean that old box. We always wondered what was in there.''
Locating the objects was easy, but discovering their history turned into an obsession.
``I had a hard time even finding someone who knew what I was talking about,'' Hill said. ``But every time I found out something, it opened another door.''
Ann Vernon, director of education at Chrysler Museum, said primitive art that wasn't from Europe wasn't considered particularly valuable two decades ago. There was a time when dentists would even melt down such objects for gold fillings.
Neither Hill nor her colleagues took Hill's quest particularly seriously at first.
``We were joking that these would make great belt buckles,'' Hill said. ``We thought they were brass.''
Finally, she brought the slides of the figurines to an art expert at Dumberton & Oakes, a research center for pre-Columbian art in Washington.
``She got very quiet,'' Hill recalled. The woman told Hill the objects were almost certainly of ``Veraquas Grand Chiriquis and Teirona origin.''
The brassy color, the expert said, resulted when Indians mixed other metals with the gold.
The expert will soon visit Norfolk, Hill said, to authenticate the collection.
Hill approximated the value of the objects by comparing them with similar figurines that had been sold at Sotheby's auction house in New York City.
But Hill said that's not what is important about them.
``It's an historical find,'' Hill said. ``It adds to the art and culture of the community.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
KEYWORDS: ARTIFACTS by CNB