Art: Littlest Lot

In Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe and Nagasaki Japanese antiquaries and curio dealers have come to know a U. S. citizen with white hair and glittering spectacles who approaches them smiling politely, holds his finger tips close together and cries over & over “Chiisai! Chiisai! Small! Small!” It is Jules Charbneau of Mount Clemens, Mich, on one of his round-the-world trips searching for minuscule knickknacks. Many collections of little things, from the elder J. P. Morgan’s miniatures to Queen Mary’s doll house, are better known and of greater artistic worth, but none is larger than the Jules Charbneau collection of whatnots which now numbers over 24,000 objects. On view last week in the lobby of Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall was the cream of the Charbneau collection.

No Frenchman, Collector Charbneau was born in Mount Clemens 51 years ago, spent his childhood peddling his father’s vegetables and acting as bellboy in a local hotel. The autumn of 1898 found him mascot of the Baltimore ball team during the World Series of the ‘go’s against Boston. Two years later he enlisted in the U. S. Navy, thus made his way to the Paris exposition of 1900. Pride of that exposition was the tallest thing in the world, M. Eiffel’s tower. Jules Charbneau’s taste ran in the opposite direction. He bought with his first savings a miniature medal, a jeweled bird and a very small meerschaum pipe, cornerstones of his present collection.

Since then he has married, won a gold watch for selling the most life insurance on the Pacific Coast and sired two daughters. The Charbneau collection has grown until Mr. Charbneau had to hire a business manager to care for it. Not everything in it is the smallest in the world because it includes such miscellany as the eardrum of a whale, a barnacle from the battleship Oregon, a horny oyster, a pair of musical balls from China, an opalized gingko tree. But notable among the costly peeweeana are the following:

¶ The original Lord’s Prayer on a pinhead, pride of the Chicago Fair of 1893. Engraved by one A. Schiller who took 25 years to do the task and went blind at its end, the pinhead contains 254 letters.

¶ Visible only under a microscope is the smallest inscription in the world, 127 let ters of a verse from St. Luke, written by Ox Fibre Brush Co.’s president. Alfred McEwen of New York. Latest McEwen handiwork in the collection is 294 letters of the Lord’s Prayer done with a one-hair brush in a space no bigger than a hole made by a needle.

¶ The world’s tiniest sewing machine cost Collector Charbneau ten times the price of a regular full-sized one. It was made by Schoolboy Henry Nelson and Jeweler Ted Brown of Los Angeles.

¶ A brown jug is so minute that one drop of water makes it run over.

¶ Even for a Lilliputian the Charbneau roller skates would prove too small.

¶ Through the eye of a needle can pass Collector Charbneau’s ivory camel.

¶ The smallest light bulb ever made by General Electric operates on one ten-thousandth of a watt.

¶ A miniature electric motor produces one one-millionth horsepower.

¶ A Ferris wheel is so diminutive that only a flea could enjoy it.

¶ Inside one hazel nut lie 3,000 silver spoons, all beaten by the skillful hand of Ah King, Canton silversmith.

¶ Pride of Collector Charbneau’s midget world is a wiliwili seed inside which fit 33 carved ivory elephants obtained from the Mayor of Bombay. There used to be 36 elephants but once, while Mr. Charbneau was showing them to Samaeka Pasha, president of the Coptic Museum of Cairo, all of them fell on the soft carpet. Though Samaeka Pasha, his wife and Collector Charbneau searched diligently, even using Mr. Charbneau’s 2-in. Hoover vacuum cleaner, the three missing elephants were never recovered.