In 1818, a young man called Charles Arthur Lowy left his school at Westminster and went on a Grand Tour. He travelled Europe, Africa, and the Far East, missioning across the continents. His experiences filled him with the wonder and joys of the world, and gave him the opportunity to procure and create artifacts with the knowledge and understanding of their origins.
Charles's journey lasted approximately eight years. During his travels, he met a beautiful woman called Elizabeth Villiers, who was traveling with her family in Africa. They immediately fell in love, and on his return from the grand tour, he requested her hand in marriage. And Elizabeth Villiers became Elizabeth Lowy.
Together, they shared a passion for beautiful things. As a family, they would travel to all corners of the world whenever their time allowed, in search of exquisitely unique artifacts. They were extremely avant-garde and became a favorite topic of conversation at dinner tables. Before long, they were on the lips of some of the most influential people in Britain.
Unlike others of their standing, Charlie and Elizabeth never relied on agents or finders to source their curiosities. The mission itself was the joy, something they both loved, and insisted on doing themselves.
Then, in 1847, a financial crisis swept through Great Britain, and the Lowy fortune was gone. The family fell on hard times, and under the pressure of it all, Charlie passed away at the young age of 47.
Elizabeth, now on her own with children and responsibility for the estate, took on an entrepreneurial spirit rare for a woman of her time. She started selling the collection slowly, piece by piece, through auction and private sale, to support the household.
By the time of her death, the family collection and estate were gone. But Elizabeth's daughter, Margaret, carried on with the same spirit of acquisition her parents had lived by. Margaret later married Benito Virgo, from Sicily, a merchant sailor and vintner.
The Lowy name has faded in history, passed down through marriage into the Virgo family, but the spirit never left, the same relentless curiosity that carried Charles across three continents, an amazing eye for beautiful, uncommon things that Elizabeth and Margaret carried through hardship, generation after generation.
Lowy exists today to carry that spirit forward, for people who want something with a story of its own. Objects sourced with the same care, curiosity, and joy that started nearly two centuries ago.
This is Lowy, a modern merchant house for beautifully made artifacts, offered to those who believe that things have meaning.