Image: Nicholas Cullinan, Director British Museum & Colin Sheaf, Chair Sir Percival David Foundation
Charity Commission approves permanent donation of Sir Percival David’s £1bn Chinese ceramics collection to British Museum after being on loan since 2009.
The Charity Commission has given its formal permission for the most valuable object donation in British museum history to go ahead.
In November 2024, the Trustees of the Sir Percival David Foundation announced they were to make a permanent donation of their collection of Chinese ceramics to the British Museum.
The collection numbers around 1,700 pieces estimated at around £1bn.
The gift was subject to regulatory authority from the Commission, which has the power to authorise payments or transfers of assets from charities where this is not explicitly allowed for in the charity’s governing document.
The Commission has now provided written authority under the Charities Act to change the Foundation’s governing document to enable the permanent transfer of the collection.
The Charity Commision said in such cases, the relevant trustees “need to think about how best to further the charity’s purpose before making the gift.”
It added: “In this case, the Sir Percival David Foundation was keen to fulfil its founder’s determination to use his collection to inform and inspire people, by keeping it on public view and enabling academic study of the pieces, while managing the charity’s resources effectively by transferring the costs of maintaining the collection.”
Sir Percival David was a British businessman who collected ceramics in Europe, Japan, Hong Kong and China. His collection has been on loan to the British Museum since 2009 in the specially designed bilingual Room 95.
Chair of The Sir Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art and The Sir Percival David Foundation Academic and Research Fund Colin Sheaf FSA said: “Sir Percival was motivated by three principal concerns. These were to preserve the whole collection together for posterity, to display it publicly and safely in its entirety, and to ensure that his superb porcelain should not only be admired by connoisseurs for its beauty but should also educate the widest possible audience about China’s historic culture which he greatly admired.
“With the valued support of the Charity Commission, the Foundation Trustees have taken this major decision because they believe that this transfer entirely meets the philanthropic intentions and long-term wishes of the Founder almost a century ago.”
The Sir Percival David collection includes a “Chicken cup” used to serve wine for the Chenghua emperor (1465–87) and Ru wares made for the Northern Song dynasty court around 1086.
