Sep 30, 2010 - Sale 2223

Sale 2223 - Lot 46

Price Realized: $ 5,280
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
IMAGES FROM THE BIRTH OF THE AVIATION INDUSTRY (AVIATION.) Collection of early Curtiss aircraft photographs and memorabilia. 70 Real Photo postcards (4 of them mailed), 28 loose photographs, 29 photographs mounted on scrapbook pages, all depicting Curtiss, his early airplanes or closely related topics, many captioned in pencil, many embossed or signed in negative by photographer H.M. Benner, most circa 1907-14; letter addressed to Walter Vroom re trans-Atlantic flight, 1919; 4 clippings about Curtiss and associates, 1908-30; and the program for a dinner given to Curtiss in Hammondsport, NY, 1928. Various sizes and conditions, generally well-preserved, 0.2 linear feet. Vp, 1907-28 and undated
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Additional Details

Aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss (1878-1930) designed and flew June Bug, the first airplane to make a public flight of more than a kilometer in 1908. The following year, he won the overall speed prize at the world's first air race in Reims, France, and launched the first aircraft company in the United States, which soon became a major supplier of military planes.
Highlights of this collection include: Real Photo postcard captioned "Aeroplane 'June Bug' Hammondsport, N.Y.," inscribed by the Bauder family and postmarked from Hammondsport, NY on 1 August 1908, less than a month after its historic flight Real Photo postcard of the infant Glenn Curtiss Jr., born 1912 Photograph of wife Lena Neff Curtiss at the controls of a plane, 6 x 4 inches, undated A disbound scrapbook of 18 photographs of the Aerial Experiment Association's work from 1908, including images of the famous planes Red Wing and June Bug, and 3 images of sponsor Alexander Graham Bell with his aviators. Copies of numerous other images from the collection are available upon request.
Provenance: These photographs were collected by the family of Walter Layton Vroom (1878-circa 1941), a contemporary of Curtiss from Hammondsport who worked as a clerk in the Curtiss Engineering Company from 1918 to 1920. Some of the postcards are addressed to or from Vroom's sister-in-law Bertha Beck Bauder and her husband Arthur D. Bauder, who both also appear in the photo scrapbook alongside Curtiss and Bell. Some of the photo captions were done by Vroom's daughter Esther Patterson (1901-1993), who grew up in Hammondsport playing with the Curtiss children. The collection has been consigned by a family member.
Two related items from this collection, a postcard and a letter each signed by Glenn Curtiss, will be offered separately in Swann's November 4 autograph auction.