Mr Alfred Clark, a cinematographer and music recordist, formed one of the most important Western collections of Chinese ceramics (outshone only by that of Sir Percival David). His first donation to the British Museum was a Ru ware brush-washer bowl in 1936; this was lent to an exhibition in the Palace Museum in Beijing in 201516. This was one of a pair; the other was later sold to a Japanese collection. When sold again, on 4 April 2012 by Sotheby's in Hong Kong, it fetched 207,860,000 Hong Kong dollars (US$26.7 million), an auction record for Song ceramics. Several other pieces from the Clark collection, including three Chinese paintings, were donated or sold to the British Museum, mostly by Mrs Clark in 1972. There was a sale of much of the collection in 1956. The rest of the collection was sold or donated by his widow during the 1970s, but is recorded in a catalogue by Edgar Bluett, first published as a series of articles in Apollo magazine Mrs Alfred Clark (d.1973) inherited her h