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Unloading our latest acquisition. Our heaviest find to date. Cannonball safe out of the old Treynor Savings Bank in Iowa.

Rare Helen Keller Photo found

Researchers have uncovered a rare photograph of a young Helen Keller with her teacher Anne Sullivan, nearly 120 years after it was taken on Cape Cod. The photograph, shot in July 1888 in Brewster, shows an 8-year-old Helen sitting outside in a light-colored dress, holding Sullivan’s hand and cradling one of her beloved dolls.

Experts on Keller’s life believe it could be the earliest photo of the two women together and the only one showing the blind and deaf child with a doll — the first word Sullivan spelled for Keller after they met in 1887 — according to the New England Historic Genealogical Society, which now has the photo.

“It’s really one of the best images I’ve seen in a long, long time,” said Helen Selsdon, an archivist at the American Foundation for the Blind, where Keller worked for more than 40 years. “This is just a huge visual addition to the history of Helen and Annie.”

For more than a century, the photograph has belonged to the family of Thaxter Spencer, an 87-year-old man in Waltham.

Spencer’s mother, Hope Thaxter Parks, often stayed at the Elijah Cobb House on Cape Cod during the summer as a child. In July 1888, she played with Keller, whose family had traveled from Tuscumbia, Ala., to vacation in Massachusetts.

Spencer, who doesn’t know which of his relatives took the picture, told the society that his mother, four years younger than Helen, remembered Helen exploring her face with her hands.

In June, Spencer donated a large collection of photo albums, letters, diaries and other heirlooms to the genealogical society, which preserves artifacts from New England families for future research.

“I never thought much about it,” Spencer said in a statement released by the society. “It just seemed like something no one would find very interesting.” Spencer has recently been hospitalised and could not be reached for comment.

It wasn’t until recently that staff at the society realized the photograph’s significance. Advocates for the blind say they had never heard of it, though after they announced its discovery they learned it had published in 1987 in a magazine on Cape Cod and a half-century earlier in The Boston Globe. It is unclear whether there was more than one copy of the photograph.

D Brenton Simons, the society’s president and CEO, said the photograph offers a glimpse of what was a very important time in Keller’s life.

Sullivan was hired in 1887 to teach Keller, who had been left blind and deaf after an illness at the age of 1 1/2. With her new teacher, Keller learned language from words spelled manually into her hand. Not quite 7, the girl went from an angry, frustrated child without a way to communicate to an eager scholar.

While ‘doll’ was the first word spelled into her hand, Helen finally comprehended the meaning of language a few weeks later with the word ‘water,’ as famously depicted in the film ‘The Miracle Worker.’ Sullivan stayed at her side until her death in 1936, and Keller became a world-famous author and humanitarian. She died in 1968.

Jan Seymour-Ford, a research librarian at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, which both Sullivan and Keller attended, said she was moved to see how deeply connected the women were, even in 1888.

“The way Anne is gazing so intently at Helen, I think it’s a beautiful portrait of the devotion that lasted between these two women all of Anne’s life,” Seymour-Ford said.

Selsdon said the photograph is valuable because it shows many elements of Keller’s childhood: that devotion, Sullivan’s push to teach Helen outdoors and Helen’s attachment to her baby dolls, one of which was given to her upon Sullivan’s arrival as her teacher.

“It’s a beautiful composition,” she said. “It’s not even the individual elements. It’s the fact that it has all of the components.” ap

Maxwell's Code

Sold for $103,500

The copy up for sale was one of the few copies in known existence and even fewer copies not in an institutional collection.


Maxwell's Code was the first criminal and civil legal code for the Northwest Territory. During the summer of 1795, Governor Arthur St. Clair and two judges, John Cleves Symmes and George Turner, met in Cincinnati to adopt a legal code for the Northwest Territory. When completed these laws, known as Maxwell's Code, consisted of thirty-seven different laws. The Code was named for William Maxwell, a local printer who set the type, bound the books and distributed the copies of the Code with the help of his wife and a single apprentice.

St. Clair and the judges decided that all of the laws had to have been passed previously in one of the original thirteen states. The laws restructured the court system then in effect in the Northwest Territory. They also protected residents against excessive taxes and declared that English common law would be the basis of legal decisions and laws in the Northwest Territory. Maxwell's Code marks one of the first attempts of Northwest Territory residents to move from a lawless, frontier society to a community based on law and order.

The Bride of Frankenstein

Sold for $334,600.00

(Universal, 1935). One Sheet (27" X 41") Style D. With a plot suggested by a portion of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's original novel "Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus," published in 1818, this, the greatest of the Universal horror films, concerns itself with the creation of a female creature by Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and newcomer Dr. Pretorius, played with evil relish by British actor Ernest Thesiger. Of course, Clive and Boris Karloff masterfully recreate their roles, as creator and created, from the previous film, joined by a stunning young Elsa Lanchester who not only brings the unnamed female creature to glorious un-life, but also essays the monster's true creator, Mary Shelley, in the prologue. Building upon his own creation from the first movie, director James Whale oversaw this, the work that was to become his masterpiece. With a deft mix of dark humor, gothic horror, and superb craftsmanship, Whale created a sequel that surpassed its original in almost every way. As great as the other films in the Universal horror canon undoubtedly are, none of them can compare to "Bride" for the completeness of its realization. Earlier films, like "Dracula" and "Frankenstein," lack the sure hand that comes from working within an already proven franchise; later films suffer from a lack of the unique creative vision that Whale was able to bring to this picture. The result is a film that must be considered as one of the immortal classics of the early cinema. Offered here is the unique Style D one sheet which, until now, had only been seen in the pressbook for the film released some 72 years ago! Long held in a private collection, the importance of this discovery cannot be overstated. A copy of each of the other two style one sheets have previously surfaced, but never this glorious beauty! It therefore writes a new chapter in the history of Universal horror poster collecting. Kept with extreme care over the years, the poster was folded with very minor chips from the corners, and there were minor crossfold separations with tiny chips present. Several tears within the image and some fold separation were noted, all of which have been expertly restored. The breathtaking image that graces this priceless beauty was totally untouched and completely intact, with colors as vibrant as the day it was printed! Minor restoration and linen backing has been done professionally and with great care, resulting in a poster that should delight and chill viewers for another 72 years or more. Never before seen and perhaps never to be seen again, this fabulous original one sheet from the Golden Age of Horror is a pearl beyond price, and a true cinematic treasure that is not to be missed. Fine+ on Linen.

‘Somebody Got An Incredible Bargain’: Spanierman’s Raphael — $37.2 Million

By Regina Kolbe



"Portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino” by Raphael, purchased by Ira Spanierman in 1968 for $325, was sold at Christie's London, last week for $37,277,500.New York City:When New York City art dealer Ira Spanierman bought an Old Masters painting for $325 at a Sotheby Park-Bernet auction in 1968, he knew he had acquired something of quality — but was not sure of exactly what. The oil on canvas was so dirty that only a bit of white fur on the sitter's collar was visible. That and a beautifully rendered right hand convinced him to purchase the lot. Nearly 40 years later, Spanierman's "acquisition," now identified as "Portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino" by Raphael, established not one, but two record prices paid at auction last week as it sold for $37,277,500.

The painting, sold at Christie's London on July 6, established a record paid for the artist at auction and also an auction record for an Italian Old Master.

For Spanierman, the sale is the culmination of a journey into connoisseurship and authentication that spanned the past four decades and involved some of the world's most renown experts.

Interviewed just hours before the Raphael was set to cross the auction block, the dealer recounted the story of the discovery.

It occurred at a routine morning sale; "Nothing remarkable, or it would have been held at night," he said. "The painting had been skied [hung salon-style near the ceiling], but I used to climb up the ladder like a monkey with my magnifying glass and look at things way up high because I couldn't see them properly from the ground." The less-than-notable frame gave no clues as to what it housed, but the few details that Spanierman could make out on the canvas were enough to convince him the work was worth the estimate.

In the days and months that followed, the painting began to reveal itself. The first light cleaning showed it to be a well-known portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici, dressed, uncharacteristically, in the French manner. A 1956 label on the back from the Walker Gallery in Liverpool offered a clue to the painter's identity. "Attributed to Raphael," it read.

It would take three years for the dealer to come to a conclusion; Spanierman was finally convinced that the painting was indeed the missing Raphael that had been intimately associated with the political history of the Renaissance.

Commissioned in 1518 by Raphael's greatest patron, Pope Leo X, the painting had served as the Duke of Urbino's introduction to Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, daughter of Jean de Bourbon and niece of Francois de Bourbon, on the occasion of their betrothal, an alliance that united the ruling families of Italy and France.



Ira Spanierman with an Abraham Bogdanove painting from Spanierman Gallery's current exhibition, "The Lure of Maine,” on view through July 16. —Antiques and The Arts Weekly photograph, Regina KolbeLess than a year after the marriage, Catherine gave birth to Catherine de' Medici and died shortly thereafter. A few days later, Lorenzo died from a disorder that was probably the result of his licentious follies during the trip to France. Raffaello d'Sanzio, commonly known as Raphael, died the following year, in 1520.

Remarkably, the portrait had been so well documented that even the date of its creation was known. The artist had begun to paint it on January 20, 1518. On February 10, 1518, Goro Gheri, Lorenzo's secretary, reported that it was "finito del tutto." Later in the century, Giorgio Vasari wrote not only of the portrait but also of its many copies.

The Medici archives document the painting's inclusion in its collection through the inventory of 1560. And then there is a gap. "Portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici" does not make another appearance until the Nineteenth Century, when it is included in the collection of Sir John Northwick at Thirlestaine House, Cheltenham. Between the time it resided at Thirlestaine and when it resurfaced later in the century in the Colworth collection of Hollingworth Magniac, the sitter had been misidentified as François I, and the work misattributed to Bronzino.

In 1892, the painting was included in a sale conduced by Christie, Manson and Woods featuring the Colworth collection. In the accompanying catalog, J.C. Robinson, the era's most perceptive scholar of Italian Renaissance painting, reidentified the painting as that of Lorenzo de' Medici and reattributed the painting to Raphael. This opinion was supported by Sir Charles Eastlake.

Years passed before the painting went on view again. In 1908, it was shown at the Royal Academy in London.

Of course, by the time Spanierman won his canvas, no one remembered.

Faced with inconclusive evidence regarding attribution, and with known copies hanging in several museums, Spanierman took the next logical step. "I called in the experts," he said. Everett Fahy of the Metropolitan Museum, John Pope-Hennessy, noted Raphael scholar, and Konrad Oberhuber of the Albertina were all "very pro the painting."

Infrared analysis revealed that the artist made numerous revisions, as would be typical of a creative process that was pressured and rushed. Since no studies for the work exist, the occurrence of pentimento further appeared to fit. Also, the original was known to have been painted on canvas. Spanierman's "Lorenzo" was a work on canvas.

In 1971, Oberhuber conclusively reestablished the position of the painting in Raphael's oeuvre in an article in The Burlington Magazine.

With the "case solved," the owner then made a masterful choice. He decided to keep Raphael's "Portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici" off the market. When asked why, he jokingly replied, "I wanted to be the only guy on the block with a Raphael."

Over the years, Spanierman has politely entertained lavish offers from museum directors and collectors. A representative of the Louvre went as far as to declare it a "French national treasure."

"After holding the painting for 39 years," the ever-dapper dealer mused, "the end of my story has to somehow be the sale of the Raphael." Asked if the end of the story is the beginning of his retirement, Spanierman said it is unlikely.

Moments after "Portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici" sold, handily exceeding its $30 million high estimate, Spanierman proclaimed, perhaps slightly tongue in cheek, "Somebody got an incredible bargain."

Spokane Station Clock

Accurate timekeeping has always been a critical part of railroad operations, and the station clock was (and still is) the public symbol of this fact. It was salvaged from the Spokane, Washington Union Station when it was razed in the early 70's and is currently on display in a museum. Spokane was perhaps *the* railroad hub of the entire Pacific Northwest.

Bette Davis Eyes

A Bette Davis signed black and white photograph, 1940s
A vintage print of the star looking pensive with her green fountain pen ink signature inscribed in the lower right-side reading "For Nina / from / Bette Davis."
14 x 11in. Sold for $425 plus Premium




Her hair is Harlowe gold
Her lips sweet surprise
Her hands are never cold
She's got Bette Davis eyes
She'll turn her music on you
You won't have to think twice
She's pure as New York snow
She got Bette Davis eyes

And she'll tease you
She'll unease you
All the better just to please you
She's precocious and she knows just
What it takes to make a pro blush
She got Greta Garbo stand off sighs
She's got Bette Davis eyes

She'll let you take her home
It whets her appetite
She'll lay you on her throne
She got Bette Davis eyes
She'll take a tumble on you
Roll you like you were dice
Until you come out blue
She's got Bette Davis eyes

She'll expose you, when she snows you
Off your feet with the crumbs she throws you
She's ferocious and she knows just
What it takes to make a pro blush
All the boys think she's a spy
She's got Bette Davis eyes

And she'll tease you
She'll unease you
All the better just to please ya
She's precocious, and she knows just
What it takes to make a pro blush
All the boys think she's a spy
She's got Bette Davis eyes

She'll tease you
She'll unease you
Just to please ya
She's got Bette Davis eyes
She'll expose you, when she snows you
She knows ya
She's got Bette Davis eyes

Toast

The Sweetheart Toaster operates by the two buttons on its base - one button for each side. Pressing one of the buttons swings the bread basket out perpendicular to the toaster allowing one to insert or remove bread. Release the button and the basket swings back against the toaster. Each subsequent pushing of a button makes the basket rotate in the opposite direction, so that both sides of the bread can be toasted.

This toaster was made and sold in the late 1920s

Union Pacific Blue Cast Globe

Different lantern globe colors signify different functions. A lantern with a true blue (sometimes called "cobalt blue") globe signifies "Rule 26". According to this rule, a "blue signal, displayed at one or both ends of an engine, car, or train, indicates that workmen are under or about it; when thus protected it must not be coupled to or moved." Shown below is a rare blue cast globe made for a tall-globe lantern and marked for the Union Pacific Railroad.

Circus Banner

Polychrome is one of the terms used to describe the use of multiple colors in one entity. Most often, the term is used in conjunction with certain styles of architecture during the Victorian era.


Polychrome Painted Canvas "LONDON PUNCH & JUDY" Circus Banner, America, early to mid 20th century, "Millard & Bulsterbaum 2894 W 8th St. Coney Island, N.Y." stenciled l.r., 7 ft. 8 in. x 8 ft.