# The Half That Was Not Sold > Vera Salomons inherited 57 of her father's Breguet watches. Her mother got the other seventy and they were auctioned. She built a museum for her half and named it after her teacher. > The Study - 2026-09-27 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-half-that-was-not-sold/ ## Key points - She inherited about half the collection, not all of it. Of roughly 124 Breguet pieces her father assembled, 57 went to Vera Salomons including No. 160, and about seventy went to her mother Laura. The mother's share went to auction after her death, sixty-one lots of it across three Christie's sales in December 1964, June 1965 and November 1965. - The most famous watch in the world is a survivor of a family division. It is intact and on public view because it was in the half that was not sold. - She put her name on none of it. Her will, filed on Jersey shortly before her death, created four foundations to pay for the museum, named for her great-uncle, her mother, her maternal grandfather and her teacher. In Kent in 1937 she had already given the family house away on condition it be renamed after her father. - She never saw the museum. Building began in 1965, she died on 12 November 1969 and it opened in 1974. Our own record had her owning the collection until 1974, five years after her death. - What she actually gave has not been settled in public. The Hermann de Stern Foundation, which she created, told Haaretz in 2020 that the objects are not owned by the museum and never were, and that ownership was transferred to the foundation by contracts in 1993 and in 2010. The text of her will has not been made public. - The horological establishment of the day thought she was wrong. George Daniels and Cecil Clutton are reported to have found it hard to believe the finest concentration of Breguet's work would sit far from London, Paris and Geneva. Daniels then catalogued it for her institution in 1980. ## The collection was split in 1925 and half of it was auctioned ## She created four foundations and named none of them for herself ## She died five years before it opened ## What she gave, and to whom, is still not settled ## She was a collector in her own right, and on one account the trade thought her mistaken Vera Salomons is the reason a specific object can be looked at by anyone who buys a ticket in Jerusalem, and the building carries other people's names. She kept 57 watches while the other seventy went to auction, she spent her last decade turning her half into an institution, she called it after the man who taught her and she called its four endowments after her great-uncle, her mother, her grandfather and him. She died before the doors opened. The one thing she did not leave in public is a set of terms, which is why the Culture Ministry, the Antiquities Authority and a Supreme Court petition were pressing a museum and a Liechtenstein foundation in 2020 about what she had actually given. A woman who refused to put her name on anything left the strongest possible mark and the thinnest possible paper trail, and the second of those is now the problem. ## Questions **Who founded the museum that holds the Marie-Antoinette watch?** Vera Frances Bryce Salomons, 1888 to 1969, the daughter of the collector Sir David Lionel Salomons. She conceived, funded and endowed the Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem and named it after her teacher Leo Aryeh Mayer, who headed the department of Islamic art and archaeology at the Hebrew University and served as its rector, and who had died in 1959. Building began in 1965 and the museum opened in 1974, five years after her death. **Did Vera Salomons inherit her father's whole Breguet collection?** No. Of roughly 124 pieces, 57 went to her, including No. 160, and about seventy went to her mother Laura Julia. The mother's share went to auction after her death and Christie's in London sold sixty-one lots of it on 1 December 1964, 1 June 1965 and 2 November 1965. The watch is in one building today because it was in the half that was not auctioned. **Did Vera Salomons ever see the museum she built?** No. She died on 12 November 1969 while visiting Ireland and the museum opened in 1974. It was completed and filled by four charitable foundations she created under a will filed on the island of Jersey shortly before her death. **Why is the museum named after Leo Aryeh Mayer and not after her?** Mayer was her teacher in Islamic art and later her friend, and the museum's own account is that she decided to create it to commemorate him after he died in 1959. The naming is part of a pattern rather than a single gesture: the four foundations she established are named for her great-uncle, her mother, her maternal grandfather and Mayer, and in 1937 she gave the family house in Kent away on condition that it be renamed after her father. Sources differ on the closeness of the friendship, and one newspaper has described Mayer as her lover, against four institutional sources that call him her teacher and friend. **Who owns the watch now?** That was unresolved at the last public reporting we found, in November 2020, and no founding document has been made public. The Hermann de Stern Foundation, a private Liechtenstein body Vera Salomons created, told Haaretz in 2020 that the objects are not owned by the museum and never were, and that ownership was transferred to the foundation by contracts in 1993 and in 2010. The same report quoted Professor Amnon Lehavi saying that only her will can reveal whether the assets were placed with the museum or with the foundation. ## Sources - [1] Abigail Green and Chris Jones, 'Vera Frances Salomons', Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, Jewish Women's Archive, updated 31 January 2022. Used for her birth on 31 October 1888 in London and death on 12 November 1969 while visiting Ireland with burial at Adare, her parents' dates, the three catalogues of French book illustrators of 1911, 1912 and 1921 which she photographed herself, her Red Cross service and 1919 marriage, her work with Mayer and afterwards with Richard Ettinghausen and Otto Kurz, the paisley collection she formed herself, the statement that she never moved to Jerusalem, and the stipulation that Broomhill be renamed David Salomons House. - [2] Abigail Green and Peter Bergamin, 'Vera Salomons and the Kotel: reading international Jewish history through a Jewish country house', Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 21, no. 2 (2022), 261 to 271, open access. Used for the deed of trust of 8 November 1937 and her Paris address at 31 Rue Vineuse, the use restriction and the publicly accessible memorial hall of two rooms, the 60,000 pounds raised for the Western Wall houses and the Weizmann letter of 4 December 1928, the David Salomons Charity of 1947, and the scholarly statement that in Jerusalem she chose to name the museum after her mentor rather than herself. - [3] Naama Riba, 'Inside the battle over sell-off at Israel's Museum for Islamic Art', Haaretz, 10 November 2020, read in full in an Internet Archive capture because the live page is paywalled. The only published account of her will, filed on the island of Jersey shortly before her death and creating the David Salomons, Laura Julia, Hermann de Stern and L. A. Mayer foundations; also the quoted clause of the original museum regulations forbidding loans, the statement of Professor Amnon Lehavi that only her will can reveal where the assets were placed, the report that clarifying documents are missing, and the Hermann de Stern Foundation's own statement that the items are not owned by the museum and never were and that ownership was transferred to it by contracts in 1993 and 2010. - [4] The Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem, own pages for Vera Salomons, Our Story, Key Figures at the Museum and the watch collection. Used for her being Mayer's student and then his trusted friend, for the statement that after he died she decided to create a museum to commemorate him, for the architect Alexander Friedman with Meir Rubin, for the single hall dedicated to her family. - [5] SJX Watches, 'Complicated Collectors: Sir David Salomons', March 2026, written with access granted by the curator of the Salomons Museum in Kent. Used for the 1925 division of the Breguet collection into 57 pieces to Vera including No. 160 and about seventy to her mother Laura, for the three Christie's sales of 20 lots on 1 December 1964, 21 lots on 1 June 1965 and 20 lots on 2 November 1965, and for the report that George Daniels and Cecil Clutton expressed disbelief that the collection would be housed so far from London, Paris and Geneva. - [6] State of Israel, Ministry of Culture and Sport, Museums in Israel portal, L. A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art, read in an Internet Archive capture because the live page returns a bot wall. Used for work on the building commencing in 1965, the structure being dedicated in 1974 and the museum opening to the public in 1974, and for Ettinghausen's acquisitions between 1965 and 1979. Note that the same page is unreliable on horology, giving Abraham-Louis Breguet as working between 1823 and 1869 when he died in 1823. - [7] Montres Breguet, 'The Marie-Antoinette watch No. 160', Quai de l'Horloge magazine, edition no. 10, read in an Internet Archive capture. The manufacture's own statement that Salomons left the watch to his daughter Vera Bryce Salomons on his death in 1925, that she donated all her collections of Islamic art to the museum project and chose to include her father's clocks, and that the watch became part of the museum's collections in 1974. - [8] Jessica Steinberg, 'Spared the auction block for now, Islamic museum's artifacts face unclear future', The Times of Israel, 1 November 2020, read in a browser after a direct fetch was refused. Used for the Hermann de Stern Foundation being the private Liechtenstein body providing most of the museum's financial support. - [9] Open Library record derived from Library of Congress cataloguing for George Daniels and Ohannes Markarian, Watches and Clocks in the Sir David Salomons Collection, including scientific instruments, boxes and automata, 318 pages, published in association with the L. A. Mayer Memorial Institute for Islamic Art by Sotheby Publications, 1980, ISBN 085667074X. Used for Daniels cataloguing the collection for her institution and for the institution's formal legal style. - [10] Naama Riba, Haaretz, 17 November 2020, Hebrew only, read in an Internet Archive capture because the live page is paywalled. Its headline states that the founder of the Islamic art museum wanted the collection to remain in Jerusalem, and its standfirst says three testimonies to that effect reached the paper ahead of the hearing on the petition. Note that the headline says Jerusalem and the standfirst says Israel.