Lion Heart Autographs, for nearly forty years an internationally recognized dealer of autographs and manuscripts focusing on art, history, literature, music, and science, announces its current, extraordinary sale on www.invaluable.com: “Five Centuries of Autographs: Ferdinand & Isabella (1492) to the Present.” In an unprecedented opportunity for collectors and museums, Lion Heart Autographs will offer a piece of the original silver-colored cloth from the fuselage of the Spirit of St. Louis signed by Charles A. Lindbergh, just days after the historic trans-Atlantic solo flight that instantly catapulted the young American pilot to lasting worldwide fame and recognition.
The auction lot includes additional unsigned swatches of fabric and several unpublished photographs of the plane in the hangar that reveal the aircraft’s damage following its historic arrival in Paris on May 21, 1927. The signed triangle of silver fabric is identified on the back in an unknown hand “Toile de France” (French canvas). A smaller rectangle of similar fabric in unused condition is similarly identified as “Toile Americaine,” and was likely taken from the cloth used to replace the plane’s original fabric-covered fuselage. This amazing artifact is accompanied by unpublished photographs depicting The Spirit of St. Louis cordoned off in the hangar with the plane’s damaged exterior clearly visible. (Estimate: $15/20,000)
Other important historical documents offered in Lion Heart Autographs’ auction, Five Centuries of Autographs: Ferdinand & Isabella (1492) to the Present include a rare handwritten manuscript by Albert Einstein dealing with matter and cosmological structure and containing a variant of the central formula for his theory of general relativity, described by noted Einstein biographer Walter Isaacson, as “The most elegant theory in the history of science.” Einstein’s revolutionary theory brought the physicist international fame and was recently proved correct with last year’s detection of gravitational waves. (Estimate: $60/80,000).
Lion Heart Autographs’ sale, Five Centuries of Autographs: Ferdinand & Isabella (1492) to the Present will include more than 140 items. Other highlights include a 1797 letter by Josephine Bonaparte requesting compensation for a Bolognese farmer whose hemp was confiscated by Napoleon’s army during the first campaign against the Papal States (Estimate: $2500/3500); a handwritten letter by Albert Einstein to his son about Freud and sex while adding that “the relation between gravitation and electricity is now revealed” (Estimate: $18,000/$20,000); and others.