Rare Book Monthly
Articles - February - 2006 Issue
Triple Play in LA
An amazing collection of aviation pioneer signatures [Courtesy B & B]
On Sunday as the show begins its final day, Bonhams & Butterfields, at 10:00 am, brings up the lights on their auction at 7601 Sunset Boulevard and via simulcast in San Francisco at 220 San Bruno Avenue. Bonhams catalogues efficiently and prints lavishly. Their presentation and material is a beautifully catalogued array that reflects the eclectic nature of Southern California. They are offering 302 lots under the title "Fine Books and Manuscripts" and the material runs the gamut from "an archive of correspondence from Gandhi to his brother and nephew" [lot 1287] estimated at $50,000 to $70,000 to a fascinating printed Illinois election document [1258] dated 1844 and including notations about Abraham Lincoln estimated at $2,000 to $3,000. A sale this wide understandably also includes six lots of Marilyn Monroe material [1295-1300] one of which is a letter she wrote in 1947 to Twentieth Century Fox that is estimated $10,000 to $15,000. During all of 1946 she worked for RKO and was paid $7,150.
There is also a group of later editions of Leaves of Grass signed by Walt Whitman [W W] to B. G. Morrison of Karns City, Pennsylvania. This is lot 1218 and it's worth consideration. For those looking to add to their collection of John Steinbeck material or, who are attracted to material with civil rights interest, there is a two page letter dated July 22, 1964, from him to Martin Luther King expressing support and concern. This is lot 1203 and is estimated $15,000 to $20,000.
Now here is a question. What does it take to make a single sheet of paper from a spiral notebook with no date and no signature worth a great deal of money: the jottings of Albert Einstein as he worked through his unified field theory. This is lot 1042 and is estimated $15,000 to $20,000.
Here is one more. It's a card signed at the 1930 National Air Races at Chicago by nearly every major aviation figure of the day including: Orville Wright, Charles Lindbergh, Richard Byrd, Giuseppe Bellanca, Jimmy Doolittle, Georges Thenault, Hoot Gibson and nearly fifty others [1284]. If you would like to both start and complete a collection of aviation pioneer signatures you can buy this one piece and be about done. It is estimated $8,000 to $12,000.
By the end of Sunday as you start home by car or head to the airport you'll be thinking this was quite an experience.
