?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
Clayton, Sharpless (1813-1862) New and Important Improvements in Mechanical Dentistry, with an Original Set of Clayton's Patented False Teeth.
West Chester, PA: John Hodgson, 1855.
First edition, octavo-format pamphlet consisting of seven numbered pages, front cover with title and woodcut vignette showing Clayton with a patient, verso of last page blank, stitched through the fold, text consisting of a description of the product: porcelain tooth veneers and gums mounted on a tin and cadmium plate, testimonials, advertising text with prices, and a transcription of the text of the patent, punctuated with a small woodcut showing false teeth, 7 x 4 3/4 in.;
[Together with]: upper and lower sets of partial denture plates each with four porcelain teeth mounted on thin metal sheets molded to the roof and floor of the mouth, and a single loose bottom tooth, all housed in a very old, if not period cardboard box.
In this brief and rare pamphlet, West Chester dentist Clayton uses a classic sales technique. The headline on the first leaf proclaims in all caps, "Prices reduced! From one hundred to fifty dollars!" By the end of page five, we see a further drop, "Full sets of teeth complete for $30."
