Why I Became the Camp Keeper
Steven G. Kern — 44 Years with the Curtis Collection
In 1991, my partner Ken Zerbe asked me to travel to Albuquerque to evaluate the possible purchase of Classic Gravure Company, then the fourth owner of the surviving assets from Edward S. Curtis’s The North American Indian.
My assignment was simple: kill the deal.
During the meeting I was shown several of the original Curtis copper photogravure plates.
I didn’t know that what I saw were printing plates, just that they were beautiful.
I believed the plates had outgrown their original purpose. They were no longer simply implements used to produce prints. They had become unique historical objects — the final physical expression of Edward Curtis’s vision before ink ever touched paper. Later, I found out that Curtis constantly edited each image on the plates as the medium for his expression.
I recommended that Ken buy the business because of the extraordinary collection of more than 2,200 Curtis copper plates and other surviving material from The North American Indian.
That recommendation changed the next forty-four years of my life.
I am Steven Kern, a CPA who spent the first part of my career with Arthur Young & Company before becoming a Silicon Valley CFO and entrepreneur. Those experiences taught me to recognize opportunities others sometimes overlooked.
Since acquiring the Curtis collection, Ken and I have helped establish an entirely new collecting category. Plates from our collection now reside in museums, Native American organizations and important private collections.
Today I am offering selections from my own personal collection for the first time.
Our copper plates live at the intersection of American history, photography, craftsmanship, Native American culture and collecting. They are the most significant surviving ephemera of The North American Indian.
CurtisCamp is my way of sharing that story and I hope you sit at the campfire with me and begin your collecting journey.