Gerald Warner was American consul in Taipei (then called Taihoku by the Japanese colonial administration) from 1937 to 1941. Interested in textiles and jewellery of the island's aboriginal people, Rella Warner, his wife, brought many examples back to the United States. Their daughter, Elizabeth Warner-Gontard, agreed for these pieces to join the Yang-Grevot collection.
Joseph Kagle came to Taiwan in the middle of the 1960s as an art student on a Fullbright scholarship. In Taipei, he became acquainted with Chen Chi-lu—the well- known anthropologist and world-reknown specialist on Taiwan's aboriginal peoples—and accompanied him on field research trips to aboriginal villages in the island's southern mountains. Under the guidance of Chen Chi-lu, Joseph Kagle collected the pieces that entered the Yang-Grevot collection. Today, living in Houston, Texas, Joseph Kagle is a well known art professor and art consultant.
Joseph Kagle, in 1966, trekking in the Taiwanese mountains.
The collection was created over the ten-year period prior to establishment of this Web site in 2007. Some pieces were collected overseas and some were bought from art dealers and collectors in Taiwan.
Gratitude is due to all those dealers, collectors, experts and others in Taiwan and abroad who supported this project, helped for the establishment of the Web site or were willing to release precious items from their own collections. For the last ones, their names are mentioned as the source of provenance provided in each item's description.
The foundation of the Yang-Grevot collection can be traced in significant part to four previously existing collections, some of which date back more than half a century. These were started by a consul and his wife (M. and Mrs Warner) in the 1930s, a missionary in the 1940s, an engineer in the 1950s and an art professor (M. Joseph Kagle) in the 1960s.
