LOT Old Heritage Auctions  /  2007 December Civil War Auction #674  / 

72074

SETH KINMAN LEGENDARY TRAPPER, CDV COLLECTION

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Photographic Images Start Price:150.00 USD Estimated At:300.00 - 450.00 USD
SETH KINMAN LEGENDARY TRAPPER, CDV COLLECTION
<B>SETH KINMAN, LEGENDARY CALIFORNIA TRAPPER,</B></I><B><I> </B></I></B></I><B>CDV</B></I><B><I> </B></I></B></I><B>COLLECTION.</B></I> Three CDV images of Seth Kinman, a self-promoting hunter and trapper from Humboldt County, California who specialized in fashioning bears and other assorted animal parts into furniture and musical instruments. These three images clearly give the viewer a sense of Kinman, the man, and his particular art form. Included is a Brady portrait of Kinman in all his hirsute glory which provides an excellent study of his buckskin clothing and fur hat. The caption reads “Seth Kinman, California Hunter and Trapper, who presented President Lincoln with the Elk-Horn Chair.” The chair in question took Kinman seven years of hunting to gather the requisite number of elk horns. Kinman also fabricated a fiddle from the skull of his favorite mule and it may be this very fiddle that he is seen playing in the other two images. But perhaps Kinman reached the zenith of his unique art form when he constructed the grizzly-bear chair which he presented to President Andrew Johnson in September of 1868. The chair was fabricated from bits and pieces of two grizzly bears, but the greatest feature of the chair was that, by touching a cord, the head of a monster grizzly bear with jaws extended, would dart out in front from under the seat, snapping and gnashing its teeth. One of the images, with a Brady studio back mark, shows Kinman seated, perhaps playing his mule skull fiddle seated in the celebrated grizzly-bear chair. A pencil notation at the lower margin reads “Uncle Seth at Home.” <BR><BR><B>Condition: </B></I>The images are in very good condition with some toning, and small loss at the corners. <BR><BR><b>Shipping:</b> Flat Material, Small (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.heritageauctions.com/common/shipping.php">view shipping information</a>)
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