perhaps Aphrodite, originally with moveable arms, seated and wearing a girdled chiton with low neckline, a broach on each shoulder (one fragmentary), a larger one between her breasts, and strap-and-pendant necklace, her ears pierced for separately-applied earrings now missing, her centrally-parted hair arranged in a melon coiffure, bound in a radiate crown, and surmounted by an elaborate flaring headdress composed of openwork rows of linked rosettes and other motifs.

Hatchik Sevadjian, Paris (Sotheby’s, London, May 20th-21st, 1930, no. 396, unsold: "the nose is very pointed and there is a deliberate touch of humour in the features... An amusing piece")
by descent to the present owner

Related examples are in the British Museum, inv. nos. 1893.0915,6-7 (R. Higgins, Greek Terracottas, 1967, pl. 56A. Also see F. Winter, Die Typen der figürlichen Terrakotten, part 1, 1903, p. 167, nos. 1-2. The present figure would have originally worn sandals with high thick soles.

Hatchik Sevadjian was born in Istanbul to Armenian parents in 1884. His father, a goldsmith at  the Sultan's court, moved with his family to Antwerp in 1897 and settled in Paris in 1902 as a dealer in precious stones. As a connoisseur art dealer, Hatchik’s passion for art led him to collect and deal in Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Indian antiquities, as well as in woℱrks by 19th-century French painters, such as Delacroix, Renoir, Monet, Degas, Courbet, Van Gogh, and Pissaro. In 1930, adversely affected by the stock market krach of the previous year, he offered for sale anonymously part of his antiquities collection at auction at Sotheby's in London under the general designation "The Property of a Collector" (the present lot and lot 27 in the present catalogue remained unsold in the 1930 sale and both passed by direct descent to the present owner, to whom we are expressly grateful for the information contained in the present note). Other sales of paintings and antiquities from Sevadjian's collection and stock followed in Paris in 1932 and 1934, some of them mentioning his name. One of Hatchik's most prized objects, a 2nd-Century Indian sandstone sculpture known as the “Serp𒈔ent King”, is now one of the major exhibits at the Musée Guimet (inv. no. MG 18214).