Paulson, Edwin A.

The Paulson-collection, consisting of Precolumbian objects from Mexico / Mesoamerica, is one of the finest Precolumbian collections at the Museum of Ethnography. Its inventory cataloge lists 1100 numbered objects. Many of its objects are indeed representative for the Precolumbian art of Mexico; e.g Zapotecan furnery urns from Oaxaca, "smiling faces" and fine clay dishes from Veracruz. According to published information, the Mexican authorities did not allow Paulson to transfer to Sweden all the objects he wanted. Nevertheless, the Paulson-collection is indeed impressive.
August Edwin Paulson was born in 1869(?) in Skåne, in the southern part of Sweden. He died in 1954 in New York as a wealthy buisnessman. Between the end of the 1880s and 1915 Paulson lived and did buisness in Puebla, Mexico, where he developed a deep interest in precolumbiana. The Zapotecan furnery urns (ca 200-700 A.D.), Oaxaca, in the collection have been much acknowledged. In the 1990s the Museum of Ethnography had many objects from the Paulson-collection on display in the exhibition Treasures from the Land of Quetzalcoatl. Litterature about choosen objects in the Paulson collection, see: Staffan Brunius, A Greenstone Figure with Olmec Were-Jaguar Motif, Acta Americana (2002); Sigvald Linné, Zapotecan Antiquities (1938). See also: Frank H. Boos, The Ceramic Sculptures of Ancient Oaxaca (1966); Michael D. Coe and Rex Koontz, Mexico, From Olmec to the Aztecs (fifth edition, 2002); Susan Toby Evans, Ancient Mexico & Central America (2004); Mary Ellen Miller, The Art of Mesoamerica (third edition, 2001). SB, 2012-02-17.