| Kenneth W. Rendell | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1943 Somerville, Massachusetts |
Kenneth W. Rendell (born 1943) is an American dealer and expert in historical letters, manuscripts, and documents. He is president of Kenneth W. Rendell, Inc., in South Natick, Massachusetts, and the Kenneth W. Rendell Gallery in New York City. Rendell is also founder of the Museum of World War II in Natick, Massachusetts.
Rendell's first wife was Diana J. Rendell, also a dealer of rare books and manuscripts. They had two sons, Jeffery and Jason. After a divorce, Rendell married Shirley McNerney, a former Boston news reporter, in 1976. They have a daughter, Julia.
Contents |
Kenneth Rendell's proclivity for the trade surfaced while a boy of twelve, when he traded his collection of English medieval coins for his friend's collection of presidential letters, and immediately felt an intimacy with history that was absent in coin collecting. In the 1950s Rendell was already a specialist dealer in American colonial coins, but within a few months following his conviction for passing forged coins his new interest propelled him toward a pursuit of history. Swept away by his new passion, he bought the bulk of an autograph dealer's estate at a New Hampshire auction, and instantly became a dealer to pay for his purchases. He has said, "I have loved every day since then as the temporary possessor of the written record of mankind's greatest heroes and villains as well as the countless individuals who wittingly or unwittingly became a part of the dramas of history."[1]
In 1959 Rendell published his first catalog, offering for sale autograph material of American presidents. From 1960 to 1965 subsequent catalogs offered historical letters and documents in many areas of American history, beginning with the Revolution and gradually moving forward in time as his knowledge about autographs, and of historical facts and personalities deepened. From 1966 to 1970 his inventory expanded to include American literature, then English history and literature, followed by Continental history and literature. During the 1970s Rendell opened offices in London and Paris, and for most of the decade he traveled extensively in Europe, searching for material. He also issued specialized catalogs ranging from The Ancient World and Renaissance Europe to The American Frontier.
Business continued to grow in the 1980s, but with institutional budgets shrinking, Rendell began to focus on private collectors and their collection development, and opened a gallery in New York in 1987 to better serve the walk-in customer. (Sales in the autograph business have traditionally been through mail-order catalogs.) The gallery was first located across from Carnegie Hall on 57th Street. It then moved east, across town to the Place des Antiquaires at 57th Street and Lexington Avenue, and in 1993, the gallery moved to its present location on Madison Avenue at 77th Street. In 1992 he also opened a gallery in Beverly Hills, which closed 10 years later. Rendell further sought to introduce more people to historical letters and documents through leading antique and art shows. Since 1990 he has exhibited at the New York Winter Antiques Show, followed by shows in San Francisco, Palm Beach, Chicago, Dallas, Basel, and Maastricht. Among the libraries he has built is Bill and Melinda Gates personal library.
To date, Rendell has issued more than 300 catalogs. Among the rarities he has owned are a document of Michelangelo, a letter of Lucrezia Borgia, and a blood-stained letter of the Marquis de Sade.
Robert S. Gordon, the National Archivist of Canada, has stated in a review of Kenneth Rendell's book on the detection on forgeries that "Rendell is eminently qualified to deal with this subject. He has researched the field, written many articles, and presented numerous papers and lectures at meetings of professional groups. He developed sophisticated methodology and scientific techniques, and put them to practical use. Being a historian, manuscript dealer, and expert authenticator, he is continuously and actively detecting forgeries and unmasking their creators. Rendell's reputation is unrivalled on this continent."[2] His office in Massachusetts houses a reference library that is also unrivaled, as well the most sophisticated conservation and questioned documents laboratory in the field.
A routine part of the Rendell business involves authenticating genuine material and detecting forgeries. Questioned material of recent years has included handwritten creations of Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Dorothy Parker, Ronald Reagan, and Elvis Presley, to name a few. And whenever significant autograph material that is suspect surfaces, Rendell is among the experts called upon to render his opinion. Three such forgeries are the Hitler Diaries, Mormon letters, and the Jack the Ripper Diary.
In 1983 Rendell was hired as a consultant by Newsweek and helped unmask the Hitler diaries, calling them "bad forgeries but a great hoax." He wrote the cover story, revealing them as forgeries. The hoax itself began two years earlier, when a reporter for the German magazine Der Stern got wind of the recovery of more than 50 diaries from a downed Nazi plane. They were purportedly in Hitler's hand. Rendell used forensic methods to analyze the handwriting, quickly concluding that the diaries were not particularly good fakes. At his trail, forger Konrad Kujau, a German dealer in military memorabilia openly admitted guilt and gladly signed Hitler "autographs" for those present.[3]
Rendell was caught up in the case of Mark Hofmann, who began by forging Mormonabilia and ended up by killing two people in Salt Lake City in an attempt to cover up his forgeries. Rendell examined one of the forgeries, the Salamander letter; he found that the ink, paper and postmark were all consistent with the period,[4] and he did not believe the letter was forged.[5] After Hofmann confessed to forging the letter, Rendell maintained that he had found no evidence of forgery, but had never pronounced the letter authentic. Hofmann is now serving a life sentence in the Utah State Prison.
A publicity brochure for The Diary of Jack the Ripper declared 7 October 1993 "the day the world's greatest murder mystery will be solved," and on hand were over 200,000 copies for advanced sales to fans of true-crime stories. This time, Kenneth Rendell was engaged by Time Warner to analyze the diary, which took more than 100 years to emerge even though the diary's author wrote, "I place this now in a place where it shall be found." In 1992, the Englishman Mike Barrett announced he had acquired the diary from a deceased friend and had deduced the identity of its author. In his analysis, Rendell was struck by the handwriting style, which seemed more 20th century than Victorian. Written in a genuine Victorian scrapbook, but with 20 pages at the front end torn out, it also gave the impression that the removed pages were used by the scrapbook's original owner. Rendell ruled the diary a fake, but the book was nevertheless released by the British publisher, with the diary's dubious authenticity noted on the dust jacket.[3]
Rendell has commented on the forged 'Black Diaries' of Sir. Roger Casement, the Irish rebel. In a survey of the Hitler Diaries, Mark Hofmann and other forgery cases, Kenneth W Rendell has stated that 'it can be an error to conclude from an examination of only a few factors that the writing is genuine or forged'. (26) It has reasonably been pointed out as well that a forensic document examiner with no official English or Irish connections would be in a better position to provide an objective analysis of Casement's diaries, and indeed the task is one which would appear to require the services of a team of specialists.[6]
In the 1960s Rendell began to appraise archival collections, a part of the business that became very important in the late 1970s. In the two decades that followed, he evaluated virtually all the major collections donated to libraries and museums in the United States, including the literary archive of Random House, the Northern Pacific Railroad archive (some ten million pieces), the archives of RKO and Paramount Pictures, the Franklin D. Roosevelt family papers, and the papers of Samuel L. Clemens, Johannes Brahms, Igor Stravinsky, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Admiral Byrd, among numerous others. Rendell's appraisal clients included the Library of Congress, the National Archives, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service, as well as the National Archives of Canada. In the 1990s he evaluated Richard Nixon's White House papers comprising forty-four million pieces and forty-five hundred hours of tapes. This appraisal was done for the former president, and the final agreed-upon evaluation settling his lawsuit over the seizure of his White House papers was within ten percent of his appraisal.
In the 1970s Rendell was involved in two appraisals that set the legal standards for determining the fair market value of historical letters and documents. In the first, the Otto Kerner case, he represented the Internal Revenue Service; and in the second, he represented the taxpayer, the Northern Pacific Railroad. In both cases his evaluation was upheld with no compromise. These are the only cases to date in which the Tax Court has not compromised between two conflicting values.
During the second half of the 1960s the Rendell business developed and expanded ties with scholarly groups. Rendell spoke regularly at the annual meetings of the Manuscript Society, the Society of American Archivists, the American Library Association, the American Association of Museums, and the Association of College and Research Libraries. He also wrote articles for their journals. (Later, he became president of the Manuscript Society and the International League of Autograph and Manuscript Dealers and was unanimously nominated president of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America). He continues to speak on occasion for groups such as the Grolier Club and Rare Book School.
What began as an avocation developed into what has been described by London's Imperial War Museum as "a fully staffed private collection containing the most comprehensive display of original World War II artifacts on exhibit anywhere in the world." Formed over a period of more than 40 years, the collection documents in detail the events of the war, from the signing of the Versailles Treaty, which ended World War I, to the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials, which brought the Second World War to its close.[7]
On display are over 6,000 artifacts as well 83 mannequins outfitted in complete uniforms and military equipment. The collection includes highly important wartime letters, documents and manuscripts of all the major political and military leaders, as well as the papers of officers and soldiers of all ranks, concentration camp inmates, and civilians. Adolf Hitler, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Sir Winston Churchill, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton, Bernard Montgomery, Joseph Stalin, Erwin Rommel, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Mengele, Adolf Eichmann, Raoul Wallenberg, and Anne Frank's family are all represented in original letters. Among the items of particular importance are Hitler's draft of the Munich Agreement with his notations as well as Neville Chamberlain's; the first message alerting the armed forces of the attack on Pearl Harbor; General Patton's letter to the Sultan of Morocco announcing the American landings and threats of destruction; Montgomery's address to the troops before El Alamein; Patton's annotated map for the invasion of Sicily; the complete plans for the D-Day invasion in Normandy; and Douglas MacArthur's draft of the Japanese surrender terms.
Artifacts include Hitler's SA (Sturm Abteilung or Storm Trooper) shirt; his first sketch for the Nazi flag; his reading glasses; Patton's battle helmet; Montgomery's beret; and copies of Mein Kampf (My Struggle / My Battle) belonging to Hitler, President Roosevelt, and General Patton. There are also five different Enigma code machines, including the ten-rotor T-52, of which only five are extant; hundreds of spy weapons, clandestine radios and sabotage equipment, together with thousands of other artifacts that reflect everyday life on the home fronts and the battle fronts. The smallest artifacts on exhibit are the spy weapons and cameras; the largest are an American Sherman tank from the North African campaign, a German Kubelwagen, a German Goliath tank from Normandy and one of the very few surviving original landing craft (LCVP) from the Pacific.
Another of Rendell's interests is the American West, and in 2004–5 the Museum of Our National Heritage in Lexington, Massachusetts, mounted an exhibition of letters, diaries, artifacts and art from his collection, acquired over decades. The Grolier Club in New York City then displayed an abridged version of "The Western Pursuit of the American Dream," documenting "this national adventure through the actual words and artifacts of explorers, travelers, warriors, gold seekers, merchants, outlaws-dreamers all-who shaped the American frontier." The overview, which began with the Spanish in Mexico and ended with filmmakers in Hollywood, gave "a sense of the struggle to tame the gorgeous wilderness that stretched beyond the tidy civilizations of the East."[8] Among the highlights were letters of Davy Crockett and Wild Bill Hickok, Frank James's playing cards, and an extraordinarily rare first-edition map of Lewis and Clark's journey.[9]
Rendell is also co-editor of two books: