AMERICAN BANK NOTE BAKER STREET IRREGULARS TRAYS

One gentleman who attended the 1940 BSI Dinner was Allan M. Price, Manager of Domestic Sales for the American Bank Note Company. Price had attended the two previous BSI Dinners in 1934 and 1936, and would attend the next one in 1941. Price was also a member of Morley's Three Hours for Lunch Club, which was a predecessor to the BSI. Price would pass away on February 16, 1943.

Now, let's move ahead 73 years — Saturday, January 12, 2013, to be precise. The annual dinner of the Baker Street Irregulars held at the Yale Club in New York City is just one event in what is now referred to as the Sherlock Holmes Weekend, which runs from Wednesday through Sunday. The dinner (now with 160 attendees) is followed by a market on Saturday, at the Roosevelt Hotel, where vendors sell books, collectibles and other items of Sherlockiana to the several hundred who trek to New York for the weekend.

One vendor, Javier Doria, a dealer of antiquities from Madrid, had a flurry of activity at his table in the Merchants Room. He was offering for sale two brass “plates” with symbolism found on U.S. currency, along with images and emblems of Sherlock Holmes. Both plates were mounted on wooden plaques, one with handles, giving it the appearance of a serving tray. Each references the January 30, 1940, BSI dinner, while the second plate also indicates that it was presented in Toronto on July 11, 1940.

The “New York” plate, with handles. Photograph courtesy of Heritage Auctions. I call this first plate as the “New York” plate and will refer to the second as the “Toronto” plate. The “New York” plate is mounted on a dinner tray, likely made of oak, and measures approximately 18.25 x 26.5 inches, with brass-and-wood handles at each end. The plate design features Holmes's profile, after a popular drawing by Frederic Dorr Steele (the illustrator of the Holmes stories appearing in Collier's), centered in a magnifying glass device, with the engraved thumbprints of “Partners in Crime” Vincent Starrett and Harold S. Latham (a trade editor at Macmillan) on either side. Reliefs of The Great Seal of the United States and the Annuit Cœptis seal found on the reverse of the United States one-dollar bill are at the upper corners next to the inlaid obverse and reverse of an 1895 Victoria shilling. At the upper center is “The Macmillan Company / 221b Studies in Sherlock Holmes 221b / January 30 1940 New York” and “The Baker Street Irregulars” is under Holmes's profile. Engraved along the bottom edge is “The Broad Street Irregulars – Lambie & Barrowman – American Bank Note Co.”

The “Toronto” plate Photograph courtesy of Heritage Auctions

The “Toronto” plate is mounted to a walnut board and measures approximately 19.5 x 29.5 inches. The plate design follows the same currency motif as its New York predecessor, with the same The Great Seal of the United States and the Annuit Cœptis, with six 1895 Victoria shillings inlaid (one of which is surrounded by the legend Allan M. Price / Holmes Maker). Centered on the plate is an engraving of Holmes in profile, after the popular drawing by Frederic Dorr Steele within a magnifying glass device surrounded by words “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Agent 1895.” At the upper center is “The Baker Street Irregulars / The Macmillan Company / Studies in Sherlock Holmes / January 30 1940” with “221 B” on either side of the date.

Surrounding the central Holmes figure are eight radiating lines, four per side, bearing the fancifully named dishes served at the BSI dinner such as Ice Cream and Petit Signs of Four. Further there is a larger medallion of Queen Victoria below the Holmes profile and two engraved fingerprints at the extreme right and left, unlabeled though likely belonging to Starrett and Latham, the “Partners in Crime” of the January 1940 plate. Mounted directly on the board beneath the plate is the label “With the Compliments of / The Macmillan Co. / 11 July 1940, Toronto.”

Until that Saturday in January 2013 in the Merchants Room, no one in the Sherlockian world was aware of these plates' existence. The minutes of the 1940 BSI Dinner make no mention of them. In writings about the BSI history, the 1940 dinner has been described at length (Arthur Conan Doyle's son, Denis, attended and was somewhat taken aback that his father was considered by the attendees to be the literary agent for Dr. Watson and not the author of the stories), and attendees were interviewed for their recollections. Once again, no mention of these plates appeared in those writings.

To read the complete article, see:
Sherlock Holmes and the American Bank Note Company Mystery (https://fourthgarrideb.com/2018/11/27/sherlock-holmes-and-the-american-bank-note-company-mystery/)

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