Extremely rare pair of plaster-cast hands of Abraham Lincoln, produced from the originals made by Leonard Volk shortly after the former’s nomination to the presidency in May of 1860. Lincoln's right hand, 6″ x 4.5″ x 2.75″, grasps a cylinder, with the wrist base embossed with text, "Abraham Lincoln, From the Life Cast by L. W. Volk, 1860,” and the back of the hand, with visible mounting wires, features a handwritten label from the sculptor’s son, “Made in Springfield, Ill. The Sunday following his nomination, at Lincoln’s home by L. W. Volk, To Mr. Whitehead, from Douglas Volk, 1931.” The left hand, 7″ x 4.25″ x 3″, shaped in the form of a gently knocking fist, bears a slightly glossy coat and a small embedded loop that juts from the wrist. In overall fine condition.
American sculptor Leonard Volk is remembered for making one of two life masks of Abraham Lincoln, which he later used as the basis for several well-known statues of the great president. In 1881, Volk published 'The Lincoln Life-Mask and How it was Made' in The Century Magazine, discussing the story of Lincoln's hands within the piece: 'I wished him to hold something in his right hand and he looked for a piece of pasteboard but could find none. I told him a round stick would do as well as anything. Thereupon he went to the woodshed and I heard the saw go, and he soon returned to the dining-room (where I did the work), whittling off the end of a piece of broom-handle. I remarked to him that he need not whittle off the edges. 'Oh, well,' said he, 'I thought I would like to have it nice. When I had successfully cast the mold of the right hand, I began the left, pausing a few moments to hear Mr. Lincoln tell me about a scar on the thumb. 'You have heard that they call me a rail-splitter...well, it is true that I did split rails, and one day, while I was sharpening a wedge on a log, the ax glanced and nearly took my thumb off, and there is the scar, you see.' The right hand appeared swollen as compared with the left on account of excessive hand-shaking the evening before; this difference is distinctly shown in the cast.'
Accompanied by a signed letter of provenance from Lincoln collector Joseph Garrera, who states that the hands derive from the Lincoln collection of Valentine Bjorkman (1874-1939) and that they were once owned by Benjamin S. Whitehead (1858-1940), a wealthy New Jersey businessman and cofounder of Whitehead & Hoag who spent his summers at Kezar Lake near Lovell, Maine. Near Whitehead's summer house was the rural community of Fryeburg, the home of Stephen Arnold ‘Douglas’ Volk (1856-1935), son of the distinguished Abraham Lincoln sculptor Leonard Wells Volk (1828-1895). It was in the summer of 1931 when Douglas Volk presented Whitehead with these hands, which, per Garrera, “have been part of several Lincoln exhibits in places such as the 7th Regiment Armory in New York City, Bridgewater College in Virginia, the Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum in Allentown, Pennsylvania, as well as being on exhibit for many years in the Newark Athletic Club in Newark, New Jersey, and elsewhere. They are depicted in the 1997 book, Collecting Lincoln with Values, on pages 94-95.” A copy of the description is included, as is a color close-up photo of the right hand and its annotated label.
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