North American Indian Clippings and Letters, with Edward S. Curtis's Los Angeles Studio Guest Book.

Three of the scarce blank volumes issued to accompany Edward S. Curtis’s monumental work The North American Indian. Two of the three volumes are entirely blank, while the third was used as the guest book of Curtis’s Los Angeles studio. Three quarto volumes, bound to match the sets of The North American Indian in brown half morocco gilt, stamp-signed by the binder H. Blackwell, the spines lettered “North American Indian Clippings” (Volumes I and II) and “North American Indian Letters” (Volume I). Printed with blank leaves and half the pages of the standard volumes, these books were made for subscribers who owned the Stickley Brothers cabinet built to house the work: the cabinet’s shelving held twenty-four octavo volumes, but a completed set numbered only twenty, and the blank “Letters” and “Clippings” volumes were evidently produced to fill the empty shelf. Very few appear to have been made or sold, and examples are rarely encountered. The “Clippings” volume is blank throughout apart from some thirty pages near the front, which Curtis’s daughter Beth used as the sign-in book for the open houses she held at the Curtis Studio in Los Angeles from 1921 to 1923; the endpaper is inscribed with the studio’s address at 668 South Rampart and a note of the two and a half years Curtis spent there. These pages record the names of visitors entered from the first open house of April 7, 1921 through the Adam’s Rib exhibition of February 1, 1923, in most cases signed by the guests themselves with their addresses and telephone numbers. Among those who signed were the composer Charles Wakefield Cadman, the silent film players Snitz Edwards and Hedwiga Reicher, the authors Gene Stratton-Porter and Marah Ellis Ryan, the Shakespearean actor Frederick Warde, the sculptor David Edstrom, the choreographer Marion Morgan, and the operatic soprano Margaret Romaine. An entry for June 30, 1921 bears the signature of Manford “Mag” Magnuson, who met Beth Curtis at the studio that very evening and would later marry her. In very good condition, with some light rubbing and wear to the bindings. Provenance: Edward S. Curtis; by descent to his daughter Beth Curtis Magnuson and her husband Manford “Mag” Magnuson; acquired from them by Dr. Billy T. Utley.