1907 Signed Book w/ Bullet Hole & Spent Shell Within

Item Details

The maimed volume is NAVIGATING THE AIR, BY THE AERO CLUB OF AMERICA. New York: Doubleday and Smith, 1907. 260 pp. Complete.

Within, rest the remains of a small caliber bullet shot through the back cover and coming to rest within the text block. The book is signed in ink: “John D. Larkin Jr, 1907”. The spent shell & fragments remain in the book.

A scion of the Larkin family & a retired Chairman of the Larkin Co., John Jr. had a complicated life.  He became a devoted follower of George Gurdjieff, Greek Armenian philosopher, he had connections to Elbert Hubbard - writer, publisher, artist, philosopher, and to Frank Lloyd Wright, and to the Kellogg family by marriage.

John Larkin built a small house on the Larkin family Lakeside estate to house his occult library collection. An elderly member of the Kellogg family, whom the purchaser of the occult library in the 1990s met at that Lakeside home, told him Larkin shot the bullet into the volume after reading it in 1907. The front endpaper contains a note regarding the book's provenance.  Domestic s&h $15 Pay now

(The Larkin Company's success was a unique sales strategy called “The Larkin Idea".  The company sold its products exclusively through the mail to women in cooperative buying clubs. Employing a variety of marketing, advertising, and employee welfare practices, the Larkin Company built a unified corporate family of “Larkinites“—employees, customers, and executives. Larkin executives also hired architect Frank Lloyd Wright to construct a modern office complex, which became the physical representation of Larkin's culture.)