An unnamed Maine family is auctioning off thousands of works by its ancestor — a famous engraver, sculptor, painter, graphic designer and composer who died more than 100 years ago.
The medals, tokens, jewelry, portraits, personal correspondence and printing tools of Rudolph P. Laubenheimer will be sold at auction in Manhattan on June 25.
Laubenheimer was a native of Germany who moved to the United States in 1851 as a teenager. (He drew many portraits of the crew of the ship that ferried him to New York, which are part of the auction offering.)
He spent most of his waking time sketching and creating art, buckles, business cards, stationery, commercial graphic artwork for advertising, door plates, and other engravings. His items were purchased by everyone from toothpaste and needle manufacturers, to the artist Winslow Homer, according to The New York Times.
He died in 1905 after being struck by a delivery wagon, and his creations were stored at various family homes. The unnamed family members are selling the collection because, otherwise, “it’s going to be lost to history,” said Dr. Robert I. Schwartz, who owns Archives International Auctions, which is selling the items. Prices start at about $100.
“I would call Rudolph a Renaissance man as well as an inspiration to anyone in a creative field as is shown with his incredible range of talent,” Schwartz wrote in an introduction to the auction items. “On top of this, he had tremendous tragedy occur early in his life.”
Out of five children, Laubenheimer lost three boys in infancy and another at the age of 12, as well as his wife, Henrietta. His remaining son, Ernst, continued in his father’s field as a lithographer for American Bank Note Company. When Ernst retired, he split his time between Maine and New Jersey, passing away in 1956. Much of his work will be sold at the auction, too.
In an email to The Times, a family representative wrote that they were selling Laubenheimer’s creations not because they wanted his name “stamped on every little thing he ever made but rather that we did not want to have his story end with us.”
