SPRINGIFELD — While waiting to hear if he had received the Republican nomination for the president of the United States at an office in downtown Springfield, Abraham Lincoln sat in a bentwood hickory chair, on May 18, 1860.
More than 151 years later, that chair is still in existence. It has had many owners since the 1860s and for the right price you could be its next owner.
New York-based artifact dealer Seth Kaller Inc. bought “The Lincoln Nomination Chair” at a Sotheby’s auction in May 2011 and listed it on his company’s website in January for $145,000.
“We’re putting it out there and I am quite sure that there will be interest,” said Seth Kaller, president of Seth Kaller Inc. “We know several museums who would want to have it and art societies, but it’s the kind of artifact that generally has an appeal to a collector or maybe a philanthropist.”
James Cornelius, curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (ALPLM), said the chair is “an amusing, tangible, eye-catching connection to a brief important moment in Lincoln’s life.”
According to the Seth Kaller Inc. website www.sethkaller.net, the chair was Lincoln’s favorite seat at the office of the Illinois State Journal, now The State Journal-Register, where he frequently caught up on news and discussed local and national affairs.
“He was seated amongst old friends at the time (he sat in that chair), and may or may not ever have sat in the chair again, since the governor soon offered him some extra space in the State Capitol building (now known as the Old State Capitol) across the street in which to organize his affairs and received visitors during the campaign for the presidency,” said Cornelius.
Having purchased the Taper Collection of Lincolniana, the largest private collection of Lincoln artifacts and documents in existence, for $23 million in May of 2007, the ALPLM does not have the funds to purchase the chair, said Cornelius.
“ALPLM Foundation continues to pay off the $23 million acquisition of the Taper Collection,” said Cornelius. “Our focus for big items lies in that realm these days.”
A dealer and collection building of historic documents and artifacts, Kaller said he listed the chair at the high price of $145,000 because of the history attached to it.
“The first step of determining what it is worth was doing all our research because that would’ve affected the value tremendously,” said Kaller. “If it had a good story, but wasn’t provable, it would’ve been worth a lot less. And by a lot I mean maybe 90 percent less. Once we started connecting all the dots, concerning the presidency, concerning the history and even seeing a picture of it in an article that was published in the 1880s and an article about it published in 1865, it became one of the most prominent artifacts that I’ve seen.”
The chair is “very appealing,” said Kaller.
“It reminds me and other people who have seen it of Lincoln and the log cabin-type era,” said Kaller.
The chair was donated to the Lincoln Memorial Collection in 1886 and put on display at the Opera House Building in Chicago in 1887. It changed hands a few additional times until the 1970s, when it was returned to The State Journal-Register. At some point prior to 1983, the chair was transferred to the James S. Copley collection of historic documents and artifacts in California. Copley’s son, David, put the chair and the rest of the collection on the market in 2010.
