Bey & Co.
Description
Bey & Co., and its subsidiary Bey & Zimmer, was an export/import company founded by Heinrich Bey, Hamburg merchant and trader. Both Bey & Co. and Bey & Zimmer had branches in West Africa (Lagos, Sapelea, Warri), from where ‘colonial goods’ and commodities (e.g. palm hearts) were transported to Hamburg. The company was one of four important principal trading firms on the Benin River and... Read more
Bey & Co., and its subsidiary Bey & Zimmer, was an export/import company founded by Heinrich Bey, Hamburg merchant and trader. Both Bey & Co. and Bey & Zimmer had branches in West Africa (Lagos, Sapelea, Warri), from where ‘colonial goods’ and commodities (e.g. palm hearts) were transported to Hamburg.
The company was one of four important principal trading firms on the Benin River and played a central role in importing works of art from the Kingdom of Benin. Bey & Co. undersigned the petition written in 1896 to the British vice-consul of the Benin River District demanding action against Ọba Ovonramwẹ because he had stopped all trade in the area (Dau, 2022 Hans, Lidchi, Schmidt, 2021).
Bey was in contact with Johannes Dietrich Eduard Schmeltz (Rijks Ethnographisch Museum, Leiden) and Felix Ritter von Luschan (Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin) in 1898, but only sold objects from Benin City directly to von Luschan. Some of these objects, when considered as ‘duplicates’, were later resold by von Luschan to Schmeltz. He also sold an object in 1903 to the MARKK, Hamburg.
Other merchants and traders are known for having worked for Bey & Co. selling objects from the Kingdom of Benin, such as Bernhard Adolf Heemke, Friedrich Erdmann, Fritz Lüthge, S. Strumpf and Hinzpeter.
Places of contact
Lagos ; Sapele ; Warri, NGEdo designations
English designations
Categories
Institutions
Provenance names
280 objects
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