A BACTRIAN RED MARBLE FITTING, LATE 3RD TO EARLY 2ND MILLENNIUM BCOxus Civilization. Of square section, the waisted body carved to each side with four rings in shallow relief, the base pierced with an aperture for mounting. The opaque stone of a deep red color interspersed with a dense network of lighter red veins.Provenance: Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium. Paolo Bertuzzi, acquired from the above in 2006. A copy of the original invoice from Axel Vervoordt Art & Antiques, Gravenwezel, 30 March 2006, describing the piece as ‘Bactrian coller’, dating it to the 2nd millennium BC, stating a purchase price of EUR 2,800 or approx.EUR 3,900 adjusted for inflation at the time of writing, apanies this lot. Axel Vervoordt (born 1947) is a Belgian antiques and art dealer, collector, and interior designer. He founded hispany in Antwerp in 1969, and in 1998, he and his family acquired an industrial site which they turned into a small green town that offers spaces for art and exhibits works by renowned artists such as Anish Kapoor, James Turrell, Marina Abramovic, Otto Boll, and Tatsuo Miyajima. Vervoordt further designed several spaces for, among others, Robert de Niro, Kim Kardashian, and Kanye West. Paolo Bertuzzi (1943-2022) was a fashion stylist from Bologna, Italy. He was the son of Enrichetta Bertuzzi, founder of Hettabretz, a noted Italian fashionpany with customers such as the Rothschild family, Audrey Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor. Paolo Bertuzzi later took over his mother’s business and designed exclusive pieces, some of which were exhibited in the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, USA. He was also an avid collector of antiques for more than 60 years. His collection includes both archaic and contemporary art, and he edited two important books about Asian art, Goa Made - An Archaeological Discovery, about a large-scale archaeological project carried out with the Italian and Indonesian governments, and Majapahit, Masterpieces from a Forgotten Kingdom.Condition: Good condition with signs of wear, small chips and losses, surface scratches, and soil encrustations.Weight: 298.6 gDimensions: Length 12 cmThe Oxus Civilization or Bactria–Margiana Archaeologicalplex (BMAC), recently dated to c. 2250-1700 BC, is the modern archaeological designation for a Bronze Age civilization of Central Asia, previously dated to c. 2400-1900 BC, by Sandro Salvatori, in its urban phase or integration era. Though it may be called the "Oxus civilization", apparently centered on the upper Amu Darya (Oxus River) in Bactria, most of the BMAC's urban sites are actually located in Margiana (modern Turkmenistan) on the Murghab river delta and the Kopet Dagh mountain range. There are a few later sites in northern Bactria (c. 1950–1450 BC), the territory of southern Uzbekistan, but they are mostly graveyards belonging to the BMAC-related Sapalli culture. A single BMAC site, known as Dashli, l