Sep 28, 2017 - Sale 2455

Sale 2455 - Lot 35

Unsold
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(ARCHITECTURE.) Archive of daily planners and address books belonging to Boston architects Jean Paul Carlhian and Elizabeth Carlhian. 107 manuscript volumes plus 15 other items in one box (1 linear foot); condition generally strong. Vp, 1935-57
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Additional Details

Jean Paul Carlhian (1919-2012) was a French-born architect who came to America to study at Harvard and joined the Boston firm of Shepley Bulfinch Richardson Abbott in 1950. He went on to design buildings for Harvard, the Smithsonian, and more, and taught architecture at Harvard as well.
At the center of this collection is a complete run of Carlhian's daily planners / diaries extending from 1935 through 1957. The first four years are covered by small pocket diaries. After that point, they are kept in three-month "Agenda" appointment books produced by the French luxury brand Hermès, complete with four volumes per year from 1939 through 1957. These books cover the period of Carlhian's youth in France, World War Two, and his early years as a working architect and educator. They include many notable names and some rough architectural sketches. They are accompanied by 5 Hermès address books (his contemporary I.M. Pei is listed), a Hermès leather notebook cover with his J.P.C. monogram, sets of boxed blank books for 1958 and 1959, 7 blank address books, and even the empty Hermés boxes for his 1950-52 planners--the man had brand loyalty.
Also included are some volumes kept by his wife Elizabeth M. Ware Carlhian (1920-2015), a landscape designer. She was one of the first class of women at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she met Carlhian. As they had similarly small and precise handwriting (they were both architects, after all), and rarely signed their books, they are somewhat difficult to distinguish. We believe Elizabeth kept an incomplete series of 21 "Agendas" in a smaller format which begins in 1948 (the year of their marriage) and continues sporadically through 1955, as well as at least one address book and wallet bearing her name.