Maine Antique Digest April 2015

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Maine Antique Digest, April 2015 25-C
- AUCTION -
Eight lots of Albert Einstein material
sold for a total of $239,720 (includ-
ing buyers’ premiums) at a sale con-
ducted by Profiles in History in Calabasas,
California, on December 16, 2014. The sum
represents a significant percentage of the
firm’s historical auction that realized a total
of $1,030,785.
Five of the Einstein lots went to Asia,
showing that the deep-pocketed Far East
continues to extend its auction participation
to all sorts of collecting fields. Americans
were the Asians’ fiercest competitors. Of
the three lots that went to bidders in the
States, one was the top-valued Einstein. It
was also the top lot of the whole 252-lot
sale. Selling for its high estimate, $180,000,
it was a circa 1930 eight-page manuscript
draft for a scientific paper on the develop-
ment of Einstein’s unified field study.
Only two of the Einstein lots were related
to scientific research. The others were such
things as a letter from Einstein to Jane Ad-
dams concerning her support for fellow
pacifist and Nazi prisoner Carl von Ossi-
etzky; a letter Einstein wrote to his first
wife, Mileva Maric, making provisions for
financial support of their children; and a let-
ter he wrote to Ethel Michanowski, describ-
ing his life among scholars at Oxford Uni-
versity. In addition, a little unexpected gem
of a non-scientific item was an autograph
poem by Einstein on a postcard photograph
of him. The verses, written in German,
were translated into English in the catalog
to read: “Ms. Inge quickly hurries by/ What
gentle breeze, what clear blue sky/ Gaze
without horror, without fear/ Upon the
landscape you hold so dear.” It was signed,
“As a souvenir, A. Einstein.” Ms. Inge most
likely was Inge Stern, a German émigrée to
Los Angeles. I found that there are extant
at least a couple of other letters from Ein-
stein to a woman by that name. The image
shows the scientist engaged in one of his
favorite pastimes, sailing. Both the poem
and the image were unpublished. It sold for
$10,800 (est. $2500/3500). The buyer was
one of the Asians.
“The Einstein material was an interesting
conglomeration, showing different dimen-
sions of his life and personality,” said Mar-
sha Malinowski, the auction house’s histor-
ical consultant, who is president of her own
business—Marsha Malinowski Fine Books
and Manuscripts. “The photo postcard
shows a wonderful, whimsical side of him.
How much would you like to have received
a poem like that from Einstein?”
A piece of furniture was the second-to-
top lot—a desk used by Abraham Lincoln
when he was in the Illinois state House
of Representatives. The future president
served four terms, from 1834 to 1842.
The desk dates from 1840, when a new
state house was constructed in Springfield.
According to the voluminous documenta-
tion that came with the desk, it was owned
at the tail end of the 19th century by a Mr.
C.E. Kuhlthau. He eventually donated it to
the Delaware (Ohio) public library for its
collection of Lincoln souvenirs. From that
library, it appears to have gone to the Illi-
nois state historical library. It eventually
went into the private hands that consigned it
to this sale. Its new owner is another private
collector, who bought it for $144,000 (est.
$100,000/150,000).
A total of seven Lincoln items real-
ized even more than the Einstein lots—
$269,750. After the desk, the second most
expensive piece was an autograph letter
signed, one of the best in Lincoln’s hand
on the market in a while. The presidential
candidate wrote the two pages in Spring-
field on August 17, 1860. Their recipient
was ThurlowWeed, a NewYork newspaper
publisher who was a supporter of the Whigs
and then the Republican party. Lincoln was
worried about carrying New York, which,
as it turned out, was unfounded. The letter,
which essentially encapsulated his thought
process as he went into the election, sold
to an Internet bidder for $87,500 (est.
$60,000/80,000).
A painted plaster cast of Lincoln as
depicted on Mount Rushmore by Gut-
zon Borglum fetched $16,800 (est.
$12,000/15,000). Just 6" x 3" x 3", it can
be held in the hand. The lot included an
even smaller (3" x 1¼" x ½") plaster cast of
Lincoln and one about the same size depict-
ing Thomas Jefferson as he appears on the
South Dakota monument. According to the
catalog, plaster casts like these were always
available on site for drillers and carvers to
reference while working on the mountain.
In addition, Borglum made and signed min-
iatures for prospective donors to the proj-
ect. The casts in this sale originated with
Camille Yuill, city editor of the Deadwood
Pioneer-Times, who befriended Borglum
as he began work on the monument in the
1930s.
The success of the Einstein and Lincoln
material notwithstanding, this sale had its
substantial disappointments, with 146 lots
unsold, including a major letter by John
Adams (est. $30,000/50,000), one by John
QuincyAdams (est. $40,000/60,000), a rare
variant of the John Wilkes Booth “Reward”
broadside poster (est. $125,000/150,000),
and 14 lots of American Revolutionary War
material. I asked Malinowski if she thought
that result was a reflection of the present
state of the market in general. She said yes,
characterizing the market as “tightening”
and noting the irony that the situation was
at least partially the result of Profiles in His-
tory’s own barn-burning sales of historical
documents from a single owner in 2012,
2013, and earlier in 2014.
“One of the big factors that affected these
results was, due to the sales of the property
of the distinguished American collector,
there has been so much fabulous material
on the market—material that hadn’t been
seen since the late seventies and early eight-
ies,” she said. “By the end of the day [for
example], we sold something like thirty-six
George Washington letters.” In order to
catch bidders’ attention now, she observed,
“It’s got to be something spectacular. We
flooded that market a little bit, and I think
it’s going to be somewhat harder since
all that material has been disseminated.
There’s probably going to be a need for a
little breathing room. So we have to be a
little more selective going forward.”
The manuscripts that do best in such
times must have great content and good
provenance, be in excellent condition, and
be fresh to the market—all at once. The
most successful lots in this sale exhibited
all four attributes. If an item lacked one or
more, there was bidder hesitation.
Two Thomas Jefferson items possessed
the winning combination. One was an auto-
graph letter signed by Jefferson, while he
was vice president, on the subject of Mon-
ticello. The one-page missive, addressed
to an unidentified “Dear Sir,” embodied
Jefferson’s ideas for fireplaces designed
to improve upon the then state-of-the-art
ones by Count Rumford (i.e., Sir Benjamin
Thompson). “The figures below will show
everything necessary,” Jefferson wrote to
his correspondent, referring to his architec-
tural drawings that take up about a quarter
of the page. The letter is dated May 2, 1799;
Jefferson had begun remodeling and enlarg-
ing Monticello three years earlier. Accord-
ing to the timeline on the Monticello Web
Profiles in History, Calabasas, California
Bidders Spend Big for Einstein, Lincoln, Jefferson,
& JFK
by Jeanne Schinto
Photos courtesy Profiles in History
An eight-page manuscript draft for a scientific paper signed by Albert Einstein was the
sale’s top lot, bringing $180,000 (est. $120,000/180,000). The subject is his unified field
theory, which was an attempt to unify his general theory of relativity with Maxwell’s
theory of electromagnetism. The latter theory was named for the 19th-century Scottish
physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell. On the first page of the circa 1930
draft, Einstein characterizes the work as being the “result of an unpublished investiga-
tion, performed by myself and Mr. W. Mayer…”—i.e., mathematician Walther Mayer,
known as “Einstein’s calculator.”
An autograph letter signed by Abraham Lincoln realized $87,500 (est. $60,000/80,000).
The two 7¾" x 5¼" pages, written in Springfield, Illinois, on August 17, 1860, were
addressed to Thurlow Weed. The subject was the 1860 presidential election.
The desk that Abraham Lincoln used in 1840-42,
during his last term in the Illinois state House of Rep-
resentatives, sold for $144,000 (est. $100,000/150,000).
It was made of Ohio valley yellow walnut and mea-
sures 30" high x 49" wide at front (42½" wide at back)
x 28" deep.
site ), he was still at
it until at least 1809. The letter sold to an
American private collector for $72,000
(est. $60,000/80,000).
Another American private collector
paid $27,000 (est. $20,000/30,000) for a
book from one of Jefferson’s libraries—
the fourth volume of The Memoirs of the
Duke of Sully, in its original French. The
duke—Maximilien de Béthune (1560-
1641)—was a confidential advisor to
King Henry IV of France, among other
roles. Jefferson often included this book
in lists of recommended historical read-
ing, and this copy was inscribed with
Jefferson’s secret marks, the initials “T”
and “I.” Jefferson sold one of his libraries
to the Library of Congress in 1815, but
he continued to build libraries afterward.
When his final library was sold posthu-
mously at auction in 1829, his eldest
grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph,
apparently kept this volume back. It then
found its way to the market, becoming
at one point part of William Randolph
Hearst’s library. When that library was
sold in 1941, the book was bought by Dr.
Alice Watson. An heir of Watson was the
☞
“The Einstein
material was
an interesting
conglomeration.”