Art: Adoration

On Chicago’s North Side stands the White Elephant Rummage Shop, a gloomy brownstone repository for the cast off knicknacks of Society. There in an undignified jumble are gilt chairs, slightly nicked, hand painted lamps, ormulu clocks, embossed silverware, picture frames, bronze cupids and napoleons. Back & forth among them move questing vultures: second-hand dealers, boarding house keepers, inquisitive ladies of uncertain age.

Last week the vultures found ripe carrion, a pile of 45 framed etchings at $2 each. They were rather smudgy plates by someone obviously impressed by William Blake, all on the same basic motif: nude man in supplication before a female angel. Each was signed “In Verehrung gewidmet”—dedicated in adoration—”Edwin Krenn, Arch. 1920.” The vultures’ eyes gleamed. Little Edwin Krenn, Swiss architect, Chicago real estate promoter, was the adoring friend of the late Edith Rockefeller McCormick. The plates were etched in Zurich, seven years after he met his benefactor, and they had been sent over to the rummage shop with a load of Mrs. McCormick’s lesser belongings. The etchings went fast. The price rose from $2 to $3.50, and soon after reporters and cameramen had publicized them, the last had been snapped up at $5. From the office of the impoverished firm of Krenn & Dato a secretary telephoned hastily for the list of buyers, promised the vultures a good profit on the resale.