[MSN] Precious Box Stolen from the Fonthill Museum

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Precious Box Stolen from Museum
WPVI 

August 14, 2006 - A museum in Bucks County has made an unhappy discovery. A small but valuable item is missing.
It's estimated that 5 billion dollars worth of art and artifacts are missing from museums and churches around the world.

The Fonthill Museum in Doylestown Township holds an eye-popping collection of Moravian tiles. It also houses prints and books all belonging to Henry Mercer, a scholar and artists who built the castle like structure as his home between 1908 and 1912.

Sometime in late June or early July a pilgrim box and chain was stolen from the Mercer collection.

It took awhile before museum personnel realized that the 2-inch by 2-inch box, depicting St. George slaying a dragon, was displayed during a special exhibit commemorating Henry Mercer's 150th birthday.

It was called the Hidden Henry Tour, but the box wasn't hidden, it was stolen. The pilgrim box acquired by Mercer in 1887 in the Aegean Coastal City of Salonika, is estimated to be valued at 25 hundred to 5 thousand dollars, but is worth much more to the museum.

This is not the first time an object disappeared from Fonthill. An ancient stone ax head was taken in 2000, and it was never recovered

If anyone has information concerning the theft of this pilgrim box, please call the Fonthill Museum or the Doylestown Township police department. 

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