Theodore Mould – In Search of Phillipo: An Armenian Merchant Between Two Empires

Philip John Nigohrus, known as Phillipo, was an Armenian merchant from the Ottoman Empire whose contributions to Anglo-Ottoman exchange in the eighteenth century have only recently been rediscovered. Long misidentified as an anonymous groom in George Stubbs’s portrait of the Duke of Ancaster’s Eastern horse, Phillipo was in fact a successful merchant whose trade extended across the Ottoman Empire and Europe.

Phillipo was born in Arapgir, in modern-day Türkiye, in a region known as the Armenian Highlands. His early life included service as a horse soldier in the Persian army, before he established himself in Aleppo, a city that stood at the centre of Levantine trade.

In 1767 Phillipo travelled to London, where he demonstrated Turkish leather dyeing techniques before the Society of Arts, earning the Society’s Gold Medal. Phillipo also imported Eastern horses into England, which he sold to the great horse breeders of the day. Aleppo was then a vital hub for this trade and Phillipo’s trade via the Levant Company placed him at its centre. On one of his journeys to London, Phillipo also had his portrait painted by Richard Cosway, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in the summer of 1771.

Phillipo’s presence was part of wider Armenian activity in London, which included figures such as the adventurer Joseph Emin, a friend of Edmund Burke, and the merchant Johannes Padre Rafael, who brought a case against East India Company officials in the London courts. Through their connections with the Levant and India, these individuals formed part of a diasporic network that connected the intellectual and commercial life of Enlightenment Britain to the wider world.

Theodore Mould read History at the University of Edinburgh and Art History at the Courtauld Institute. His work has been published in The Burlington Magazine and Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He has worked at Artclear, a technology company digitising the transaction of physical works of art and Anthony Mould Ltd, a London art dealership specialising in British art. He is currently training to become a barrister