ABSTRACT
Nellie Ionides collected Chinese porcelain and eighteenth-century art from an early age and this chapter explores the integral role played by art collecting in the formation of individual and group identities and the agency of Chinese art objects amongst her social milieu. Born to a leading Anglo-Jewish family with connections through trade with China and Japan, Nellie Ionides circulated amongst the highest levels of British society and the Anglo-Jewish elite for whom art collecting was an important signifier of status. The collector was keen to exhibit her art collections within the public sphere of the museum and art gallery, loaning objects to the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and Royal Academy and gifting items to the British Museum. She was on friendly terms with museum experts and her collecting activities were supported by a network of agents and advisors, dealers, and auctioneers. It was through her art collections and diverse social circles that she would meet her second husband, Basil Ionides.
During the 1930s, Nellie joined leading Jewish aesthete Sir Philip Sassoon, opening her private apartments to exhibit her Chinese and European porcelain collections to aid the Jewish cause. Her support for the newly founded Jewish Museum in London (founded 1932) affirms her interest in the material and cultural heritage of the Anglo-Jewish community at an increasingly perilous time.
