Search Results: Art & Artifacts from Seth Kaller, Inc.

A unique and important artifact of his childhood.
[ALBERT EINSTEIN]. Ephemera. Set of Anker-Steinbaukasten children's building blocks by F. Ad. Richter & Cie., Rudolstadt, [Germany], c.1880s. Approximately 160 composite quartz sand, chalk, and linseed oil blocks in red, limestone and slate gray, in various sizes and shapes, together with three or more sets of building plans, all contained in two wooden boxes with printed Anker-Steinbaukasten labels.
Einstein spent his childhood building "complicated structures" with these Anker-Steinbaukasten blocks. Accepting his later theory that "Imagination is more important than knowledge," the toys that encouraged his imagination became building blocks for the most important scientific theories of the last millennium.
His sister Maja Winteler-Einstein, describing his childhood, recalled that "The games he played … were very characteristic of Albert's capacities. These were mostly puzzles, fretsaw work, the erection of complicated structures with the well-known… Read More

[MARTHA WASHINGTON]. Portrait Signed by the artist ("Fabre"). 2¾ x 3¾ in.
This portrait of Martha Washington, hand-painted on ivory, is likely by noted Swiss/French miniaturist Louis André Fabre (1750 – 1814). The French had a penchant for painting mid-nineteenth-century miniature portraits, including images of American historical figures, on ivory. This miniature is in its original frame and back insert. Though "Mère de Washington" (Mother of Washington) is written on the reverse, the image is clearly Martha.

Relates a conversation with Peter Rothermel on the need to nurture an "American School of Design," with sharp criticisms of the deleterious effects of European study on budding talent as seen in Emanuel Leutze's latest work.

"[Rothermel] during the evening suggested one thing as tending peculiarly to build up an American School of Design without the extraneous influences that all young men going abroad are subject too. it was that an embargo to prevent the leaving of artists for abroad, for a space of 50 years, be put in operation, thus causing their productions to be pure emanations of their own early & intuitive feeling…" JOHN MACKIE FALCONER.
Autograph Letter Signed, to Jasper Cropsey, Washington, D.C., January 15, 1845. 4 pp., 7⅞ x 9⅞ in. Includes envelope.
Complete Transcript

[Postscript in top margin:] I forgot my subject for sketch, but leave it with you to receive for me on my week either the "Noisy Scene" or "Passing Away"-either you think best general subject… Read More