Lot 5. A superbly carved and extremely large limestone head of Buddha, Tang dynasty (618-907). Height 27 1/2  in., 70 cm. Estimate: 2,000,000-3,000,000 USD. © Sotheby's 

NEW-YORK. - There are a handful of collectors in the world of Chinese art that are inextricably associated with works of exceptional quality. Stephen Junkunc, III, (d. 1978) is among these luminaries. Discover more about this inspiring collector ahead of Sotheby's Asia Week 2018.

today the name of Junkunc conjures a period during which some of the greatest Chinese treasures came to America and today indicates one of the most important, and indeed desirable, provenances for Chinese art. Formed in America in the mid-20th century, the Junkunc Collection at its height numbered over 2,000 examples of exceptional Chinese porcelain, jade, bronzes, paintings and Buddhist sculptures; serving as a testament to a period of unprecedented wealth of Chinese material available in the West, as well Junkunc's astounding intellectual curiosity, coupled with the means and savvy to acquire internationally from the leading dealers in the field.

Stephen Junkunc III, photographied with his collection, featured in the 7 september 1952 edition of the Chicago Tribune. 

Stephen Junkunc, III was born in Budapest, Hungary around 1905, and emigrated to Chicago, Illinois, as a young child, where his father Stephen Junkunc, II, a tool-and-die maker, founded General Machinery & Manufacturing Company in 1918. The company specialized in the manufacture of knife-edge fuel nozzle heads. With the outbreak of World War II, General Machinery converted its shop for the war effort and began manufacturing various aircraft parts, including B-29 hydraulic spools on behalf of Ford Motor Company.

Outside of his familial business commitments, Stephen Junkunc, III, spent his free time learning about Chinese art. A voracious reader with an unabated hunger for knowledge, he studied the Chinese language and kept extensive libraries of Chinese art reference books and auction catalogues at both his home and office. These were instrumental to his collecting – his first acquisitions were in the early 1930s, apparently after happening upon a book on Chinese art.

It is perhaps no coincidence that Junkunc’s initial collecting activity largely coincided with the establishment of the Chicago branch of the reputable Japanese dealers Yamanaka & Co., Ltd., who opened a gallery at 846 North Michigan Boulevard in 1928. Many of Junkunc’s early purchases came from Yamanaka, and before long, he was buying directly from the leading London dealers specializing in Chinese art: Bluett & Sons, W. Dickinson & Sons, H.R.N. Norton and, of course, John Sparks, seeking fine examples of porcelain for his collection. Indeed the Junkunc Collection today ranks among the greatest assemblages of porcelain ever formed in the West. The collection included two examples of the fabled Ru ware, of which only 87 examples in the world are known. These two dishes represented two of the only seven examples of Ru ware to have been offered at auction since the 1940s. One of the Ru dishes, purchased from C.T. Loo in 1941, set a new world record when it sold at auction for $1.6 million in New York in 1992, and is today in the esteemed collection of Au Bak Ling.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the inventories of Yamanaka’s galleries in America fell into the custody of the United States government, which dissolved the company, seizing and eventually selling off much of its merchandise through auctions held at the Galleries in New York in May and June 1944. This same year Hisazo Nagatani, the former manager of Yamanaka’s Chicago gallery, established himself as an independent dealer in Chicago under the company name Nagatani Inc. Nagatani remained an important dealer for Junkunc over three decades, supplying by far the majority of the works in the Junkunc Collection.

Throughout the 1940s, Junkunc broadened his collecting interests to focus on earlier objects, including Song to Ming ceramics, archaic bronzes and – crucially – Buddhist sculpture. In addition to Nagatani, he purchased extensively from auction, particularly from Parke-Bernet, Tonying & Company and C.T. Loo, in New York.

By the early 1950s, Junkunc had amassed an impressive collection of Chinese works of art which by then was largely securely stored in the museum-like environs of a subterranean bomb shelter in the grounds of his home in Oak Park, Illinois. In a 1952 profile in the Chicago Tribune, the bunker is described as storing a ‘priceless hoard’, with "shelves weighted with priceless pieces of Chinese art, prizes produced through a span of centuries. A record of a nation in tapestry, bronze, jade, pottery, robes, and lacquer":

Junkunc sits spider-like in the center of a web of agents scattered throughout the world. His escapades in procuring some objects have called for the suavity of a diplomat, the daring of an international spy, and the speed of a distance runner. Cloaked in intrigue and secrecy, and spiced by competition, collecting oriental art is no role of a Milquetoast. 
–Chicago Tribune, 7 September 1952

Stephen Junkunc, III, pictured with lot 15 in Junkunc: Chinese Buddhist Sculpture (12 september, New York) illustrated in the 7 september 1952 edition of the Chicago Tribune.

The 1950s and 1960s witnessed perhaps the most fervent period of buying activity for Stephen Junkunc, III, when he continued to make large acquisitions from Nagatani and Frank Caro, the successor of C.T. Loo, as well as from Alice Boney and Warren E. Cox, New York, and Barling of Mount Street Ltd., London. His purchases during this decade, which sometimes involved acquiring up to 50 works at a time, appear to have concentrated primarily on early material, including a number of acquisitions of Buddhist sculpture, which consistently ranked among his most expensive purchases. Junkunc continued purchasing and studying Chinese art until his death in 1978, whereupon the collection passed to his son Stephen Junkunc, IV, and has remained in the family collection since.

Not only a fervent collector, Stephen Junkunc, III, was also an avid museum supporter. Throughout his life he worked closely with and actively supported the curators at American museums. He cultivated a particularly long-standing relationship with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC), frequently loaning works from his collection to exhibitions through the 1940–60s. Works from the Junkunc Collection were also loaned to the seminal Ming Blue and White exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, which traveled to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1949, and to the Arts of the T’ang exhibition of 1956, at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art. Junkunc’s generosity towards American museums also extended towards bequests, with gifts from his collection now housed in the Milwaukee Public Museum, Wisconsin, and the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Florida, near his Coral Gables summer home.

During Asia Week 2018 property from the esteemed Junkunc Collection will be featured in Junckunc: Chinese Buddhist Sculpture (12 September, New York), Important Chinese Art (12 September, New York), Fine Classical Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy (13 September, New York) and Saturday at Sotheby’s: Asian Art (15 September, New York).