Vera Frances Bryce Salomons (1888-1969) was the scion of a Jewish aristocratic family in England and the grandniece of Sir David Salomons, Lord Mayor of London and Member of Parliament. Mrs. Salomons was a prominent philanthropist who, from 1925 onward, was active in furthering the cause of Eretz Israel and the State of Israel. Among the projects she sponsored were immigrant housing and residences for the aged. She also extended substantial support to universities and various social institutions – always regardless of nationality and ethnic background. The focus of her work was the cultivation of mutual understanding between Jews and Arabs. By strengthening the acknowledgment and appreciation of the Islamic cultural heritage, it was Mrs. Salomons's intention to allay tensions between the two nations. Mrs. Salomons was a student and friend of Prof. Leo Arie Mayer of the Department of Islamic Art and Archaeology at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. The L.A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art was established several years after Prof. Mayer's death in 1959, in homage to his lifework. One of the Museum's exhibition halls was dedicated to the memory of Mrs. Salomons's family and displayed therein is the magnificent collection of watches and clocks that belonged to her father, Sir David Lionel Salomons.
Prof. Leo Arie Mayer (1895-1959) was descended from a rabbinical family in southeast Galicia. In 1913 he went to Vienna to study the history of art and Semitic languages, eventually completing his studies in Berlin. Prof. Mayer immigrated to Palestine in 1921 and there fulfilled his life's dream – the research of Middle Eastern art and archaeology. In 1925 the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was established and Prof. Mayer was appointed lecturer in his subject field. During the years 1933 to 1945 he served as rector of the University. In the context of his research, he investigated archaeological finds in Jerusalem and its surroundings, among them inscriptions on Jewish gravestones and other epigraphic remains. Together with Prof. Eliezer Lifa Sukenik, Prof. Mayer discovered the ruins of the third wall of the Old City. During the years 1925 to 1932 he published reports and articles on archaeology, numismatics, epigraphy and the art of the region. In 1933 he became renowned as a world authority on Saracenic heraldry and Islamic artists. In 1959 Prof. Mayer was posthumously granted the Israel Award. The judges cited his contribution to the research of the material culture of Islam, which was not limited to art and archaeology alone but also extended to the realms of history and society. Prof. Mayer's dedication to the research of Islamic art indeed stemmed from his deep appreciation of Islamic culture at large. He believed that introducing this rich culture to the Israeli public would contribute to the coexistence between Jews and Arabs.
Prof. Richard Ettinghausen (1906-1979) of the Institute of Fine Arts in New York, an outstanding researcher of Islamic art, was entrusted with the purchase of the L.A. Mayer Museum's Islamic collection. For forty years, from the time he received his doctorate in Islamic history and art history from Goethe University in Frankfurt in 1931, Prof. Ettinghausen published hundreds of articles on almost every aspect of Islamic art and architecture. Having established the collections of Islamic art in the Freer Gallery, Washington, D.C., and in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, he was justly called "the promoter of Islamic art in our time."