Marcia Noyes was known for was attending auctions. When we first opened our building at 1211 Cathedral Street, she wanted to furnish it with comfortable chairs and sofas (think Chesterfields) and old paintings, as we did not yet have the painting collection that we do now.
I have continued that tradition, finding everything from a set of three large teak bookcases, to a glass-fronted book case (sadly not a barrister's bookcase), and any number of old medical books which I've picked up for a pittance.
One of my best finds (so far) was a medical ledger from one of our Founders, Dr. Francis Brown Sappington. You can read about it here.
Over the weekend, I was at a country auction in rural Pennsylvania. It's a two-part auction, both parts running concurrently. In the front, there is an auctioneer selling one item at a time. In the back, it's kind of a chaotic free-for-all, with a box lot auction*.
I was going back and forth between the two and just happened back when they were starting to sell the "artwork" which I'd already glanced through.
But when they laid the art out, there to my absolute shock was a small photograph of William Osler! The photograph is signed and is from the Philadelphia period.
I found the same photograph in the McGill collection with a good description.
One thing I wonder about is whether Osler would have had a whole stack of photographs that he signed, or whether the signature was printed along with the photograph. Keep in mind that this was 1887-ish, just before he moved to Baltimore.
Here's the signature block on the bottom. Both of the photos are by Phillips, but with different fonts, and the word Philadelphia spelled out on mine.
If you'd like to see what we've found at auction, please click here.
* A box lot auction is a table filled with random boxes of assorted items. Everyone throws out bids, but no one knows what anyone else is bidding on. So, if I am looking at the Osler photo, and you're looking at the tools, neither one of us knows, so we both bid up to our high number. I win, and grab the Osler photo, and then the bidding starts over. If I pick two lots, it is twice the money. It's risky if you have your eye on something specific and have set an internal price. Someone else can snap it up! But it's a lot of fun.
