More than a Century with the Copper Plates
From Curtis’s darkroom to your walls — the complete journey
Every Curtis copper photogravure plate has lived two lives. The first was as an essential part of Edward S. Curtis’s monumental work, The North American Indian. The second has been a remarkable journey through more than a century of survival, rediscovery, stewardship, and collecting. This is the story of that journey.
Curtis Creates the Plates
As Curtis finished taking photographs and writing text for each defined section, Portfolio and Volume images were selected and the glass negatives were sent back to Boston for the copper plates to be made. Once made, proofs would be drawn and Curtis would edit the images right on the plate. That was continuous over the thirty-year period that the project was in the field.
The Morgans Acquire the Plates
JP Morgan financed the project for thirty years, expecting to recover his investment from the sale of The North American Indian subscriptions. Curtis spent significant time, when he was not in the field, marketing those subscriptions. However, the project stretched out over a lengthier period than expected and Curtis had to give up ownership in The North American Indian Company to receive the funds to finish the last part of the project. In the end, when the 20th Volume and Portfolio were completed, the Morgans owned the assets of The North American Indian Company and, consequently, all the copper plates. Among the assets were also interesting ephemera including Theodore Roosevelt’s Foreword Plates, wooden Music Blocks, and Table of Contents Plates.
Lariat Becomes Custodian
Lariat did the publishing of The North American Indian, a costly endeavor. When the Great Depression effectively ended the sale of subscriptions, Morgan’s son sold Lariat the plates and unbound gravures and all assets for $1,000 and cancellation of any outstanding bills.
Decades in Storage — Rediscovery
The plates had a home in the Lariat warehouse until they were rediscovered in the 1970s and purchased by the First Curtis Consortium. They were in wooden crates, steel-faced and covered in protective asphalt.
Successive Owners
The first Consortium decided that the loose Portfolio Gravures needed to be re-organized in complete sets (of 35–37) in the original Portfolios, so they started printing, mostly in the first eleven Portfolios. These gravures were called Cerini and are considered vintage. In all, by most counts 272 complete sets of the NAI were produced, including this later printing. The plates and assets then passed through several more ownership groups.
Classic Gravure
Classic Gravure was the last group to own the plates prior to current ownership. Their vision was to complete Curtis’s dream of 500 sets of The North American Indian — though narrowed to four volumes based on regions: Southwest, Northwest, Plains, and California Basin.
The ZAK Acquisition
The plates were purchased by a New Mexico partnership of Zerbe, Anderson, and Kern — known as ZAK. Anderson was bought out by Zerbe and Kern, and ZAK was then liquidated in 1985. The plates passed to Zerbe and Kern in their individual names, as they are to this day.
Printing
From 1981–1984, few printing activities were carried out, as there was sufficient inventory of re-strike gravures. In 1985, printing was done with plates not used by Classic Gravure for a joint marketing project with American Express. After 1985, the only subsequent printing was done by license to one of the partners in Classic Gravure. There has been no printing done since 1990 — thirty-six years.
Donations
Portfolio and Volume Plates were donated to The Smithsonian, the Center for Creative Photography (University of Arizona), and The Seattle Art Museum. In 2021, an additional donation was made to seven institutions, including The Smithsonian and the University of California, Davis.
A New Collecting Category
Our first plate sale was made to a doctor in Colorado. To this day, when I am near, I take him to dinner.
We hired the noted Curtis dealer Bruce Kapson on an exclusive basis. We won over his early skepticism with our arguments about the plates and their position as important ephemera. His research confirmed the existence of continual edits — proof that each plate was the artist’s final statement. Bruce made his first sale to a collector in Bellevue, Washington, through a decorative advisor.
Kapson arranged an auction at Sotheby’s for one Portfolio Plate — Bear’s Belly. It sold for $81,000. Ironically, right after the ZAK acquisition, a Sotheby’s director had told me to throw Chief Joseph in the garbage can as worthless — that plate was later sold through a chain of dealers to a client who paid $800,000. Kapson hosted Paris Photo Los Angeles and sold a significant number of plates including Cañon de Chelly.
We made tribal sales to The Cahuilla and Skokomish, who purchased their entire sets. Many noted collectors of Curtis and Western Art acquired plates. The Scottsdale Museum of the West hosted a one-year show featuring the plates and Curtis materials. The Andrew Smith Gallery, Melissa Flury Gallery, and The Rainbowman continue to sell plates to their clients.
Stewardship
Over a ten-year period, all of the plates in our possession were conserved to their original copper form, removing steel-facing in a multi-step process and polishing them to display their image. The plates were then stored in vacuum bags to maintain their condition. No plate sold has ever been returned.
The Camp Keeper
Over the years, Zerbe acquired some of Kern’s interest in certain plates, now owning most of the Volume Plates remaining (900) and roughly 70% of the Portfolio Plates (250). Due to age — Zerbe is 88 — we have recently started distributing plates for separate collections. Kern, The Camp Keeper, owns 60 Portfolio Plates, which are the main subject of CurtisCamp. I will be selling plates and NAI ephemera from my private collection — items priced from $500 to $50,000 depending on subject and rarity, including “collections within a collection.” I personally chose all of these items.