A History of Two Prints

In 1969, William C. Estler, a public relations counselor in Palo Alto, California and close friend of Chesley Bonestell, suggested that they collaborate on the publication of a series of high-quality facsimile reproductions of the artist's most popular paintings. Estler's idea was that he, Chesley and Hulda Bonestell form a partnership to cover the costs and share in the proceeds. Bonestell was interested in the idea. "Regarding the reproductions deal," he replied, "I sat down and gave it serious thought, after having first raised my usual cloud of opposition." Mentioning upcoming coverage of his work on CBS television, Bonestell concluded that "with this kind of publicity, let's leave Hulda out, and you and I will do it if you will agree to make two of the moon and two of Mars. Or, if you prefer, two of the moon, your Orbital
Assembly of Deep Space Craft over Panama, from Beyond the Solar System , as an intermediate phase, and one of Mars, which I think should be your Exploring Mars. People prefer horizontal pictures to verticals, as you know."

With this tacit agreement from Bonestell, Estler proceeded to investigate the costs of printing museum-quality reproductions. One of the first estimates he received, from the H.S. Crocker Company in San Francisco, gave him a jolt. "I am still in semishock," he reported to Chesley. The cost for reproducing four paintings was as high as $11,240 for a print run of only 500 copies of each painting, an amount neither Estler nor Bonestell was willing to pay. "Of course," Estler admitted, "this would produce museum-quality prints . . . and sunstroke and heart-stoppage for me."

Estler's next stop was Peninsula Lithograph of Menlo Park, California, who had impressed him with their work on the catalog of the Brundage Collection of Asian Art (the same collection that later inspired Bonestell's "paintings in the Chinese style") as well as for magazines such as Sunset. "These more reasonable and sensible people," he wrote, "have come up with quotations of around $3000 for four-screen and $3600 for five-screen prints---same quality and paper. Add about $1000 more for mailing tubes, handling, student labor to fill orders, stationery, post office box rental, postage, etc. and I think we have just the deal we want for $5000---or $2500 each."

If Bonestell agreed with this, Estler would sell the prints for $25 and $35 apiece. "Fool's arithmetic," he said, "tells me this would come out to $25,000 for 1000 of the smaller size and $35,000 for the larger size---to a total of $60,000. Whereupon we would buy a Polynesian Island and say 'To hell with it'." More seriously, Estler suggested that in addition to mail order sales the prints also be sold through the Smithsonian and the Hayden Planetarium in New York "and wherever else the paintings are shown and offer $5 [for each of the prints sold,] making it $20 and $30 to Bonestell Space Paintings, our new firm."

Estler planned to advertise the prints through flyers, magazines and news releases, all of which he thought would fall within their $5000 budget. He hope to recoup their initial investment within six months. All he needed now was Bonestell's final go-ahead on the project.

Bonestell told Estler that he did not think that the quotations from Peninsula "seem out of line for such high-class work". But he still had a few doubts about the project. "My problem," he said to Estler, "is not only that I don't need the money but I firmly believe that you cannot get $25 to $35 a print. My field is too limited and the class it appeals to---astronomers and younger people---[are] too poor to afford such prices. And a print at that price calls for framing, an added $15 at least. Seven-fifty or $10 at most would be the maximum, to my way of thinking. Nobody but Gaugin [sic], van Gogh or Sung dynasty paintings . . . can command such prices for prints, because they are of great general public interest. This is the way I see it, but if you believe in it so firmly I do not want to stand in the way of the project . . ."

The question of how many different prints there were to be was still open. At this time the list included five paintings: Setting Up a Moon Encampment, Jura Mountains on the Moon, Blast-Off from Moon Colony, Mercury Capsules Being Loaded from Cargo Ship and Exploration of Mars.

Bonestell was finally convinced of the viability of the venture when Estler showed him "a sheaf of collected inquiries" from fans who wanted reproductions. "We both ponied up $1000 each" Estler later told Frederick C. Durant, assistant director of the National Air & Space Museum, even though the final printing bill came to over $3000.

In February 1970, Estler was delighted to hear from Carl Fox at the museum shops at the Smithsonian Institution. Fox thought it "only proper" that these be made available though the museums. In a telephone conversation with Estler, Fox agreed to accept 250 signed copies of each print (at this time Estler still planned on producing a series of six). On March 12, 1970, a jubilant Estler wrote to his partner to say that "Well, we're in business! Bonestell Space Art was born {financially, at least) the other day when I opened a new bank account at Bank of America in our new business name. I put down our names (Chesley Bonestell and William C. Estler) as principals . . . and I will leave it up to you to decide when Hulda's name is activated, either as self or as power-of-attorney or whatever in the Dim Unforeseeable!"

In March, 1970, the prints came off the presses at Peninsula. Two paintings were chosen for the initial venture: Saturn from Titan (a second version of the classic Conquest of Space painting, which Bonestell had painted for his daughter) and Exploration of Mars (from the book of the same title).

The shipping of the prints to the Smithsonian was held up due to the late delivery of a numbering machine Estler wanted to use to serialize the prints with. "I have decided," he told Bonestell, "to create a Registry for all the prints. Each will have a code and serial number assigned, so we can know who owns what and put them on the mailing list for future editions. Also it lends a little elan to have the prints registered." As Estler elaborated a few years later, the registry was created "in an effort to control piracy [the fear of foreign piracy was also the reason Estler never announced the size of the editions] . . . Also, we wish to know the owners of this limited edition for perpetuity. I feel certain these prints will become collectors items in time---sort of as having the autograph of Leonardo da Vinci or Christopher
Columbus---and it will be important to register the ownerships in an archives." His hope was that this registry would eventually end up in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution. (Unfortunately, Estler failed to take into consideration the fact that collectors would eventually sell the prints between themselves---thereby ultimately negating the registry.) In order to maintain the registry, Estler sent John Skuce, business manager of the museum shops, a "handsome ring-binder with registry sheets coded against the print numbers in the shipment." There is no evidence, however, that any clerk at the museum shops ever took the time and trouble to fill out the name and address of the purchasers of any of the prints. In fact, in the official registry---which is still extant---there are only blanks in the spaces next to prints sold
through the museums and other venues, such as the Gallery Who's Who in Art, where Estler had hoped to list the names and addresses of the owners. Additionally, there are several serialized prints that have no entries whatsoever---their fate is entirely unknown. Among the proud early owners of Bonestell prints were Gene Roddenberry (#118), Poul Anderson (#1-006) and Verna Smith Trestrail (#1-201 and 1-202).*

Meanwhile, on the third of March, 1970, Bonestell sent Estler a check for $1000 "representing our contribution toward the reproduction venture." He also promised to have the 300 copies of Saturn from Titan that Estler had left with him signed by that same night.

Estler's original euphoria concerning the order from the Smithsonian gift shops was short-lived. In the four months that had passed since sending the museum the prints, Estler had "heard absolutely nothing from Skuce directly since {except from having a telephoned him at my expense earlier this month. He has not answered my letter
of 9 June . . . When I finally tracked him down, he seemed a bit peevish about the whole matter, said only two prints had been sold since April . . . And has not kept his promise to even give a report of the two prints sold." Bonestell, he told Durant, "is disappointed about the sales . . . and is becoming disinclined about the gift deal [of original paintings] to the Smithsonian."

In April 1970, before he realized what a disappointment the Smithsonian gift shop deal was going to be, Estler agreed to send 100 copies of each of the two prints to The Book Corner, a shop operated by the American Museum-Hayden Planetarium. Estler serialized 100 each, along with one each, unserialized, for display purposes. (The Saturn prints sent to the Hayden were numbered 0 through 250 and the Mars prints 1-251 through 1-350.) As he had done with the Smithsonian consignment, Estler requested that a registry be kept of purchasers, though, as with the Smithsonian, there is no evidence that anyone bothered to do this.

Meanwhile, Estler proceeded to work hard at advertising and selling the prints on his own. He took out large ads in magazines such as Modern Astronomy and Sky & Telescope , which were to turn out to be very successful. Nevertheless, it was decided by this time that the first two prints would be the only ones---"there will be no others," Estler admitted regretfully.

In May 1971, Bonestell---in large part due to his disappointment regarding the Smithsonian---opted out of the publishing venture, assigning all rights to the distribution and sale of the prints to Estler on the return of his original $1000 investment. In the future, Bonestell would receive only a flat royalty of ten percent. After Estler's death in 1981, Chesley and Hulda Bonestell transferred all of the responsibilities in Bonestell Space Art (which included the "sales of facsimile reproductions") to Frederick C. Durant and Carolyn J. Durant. Today, Bonestell Space Art is co-administered by Mr. Durant and Ron Miller, who not only control the interests of the late artist, but maintain the archive of Bonestell's original records and correspondence, which served as the basis for this report.

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* It cannot be overstressed that this numbering system was clearly not intended to emulate traditional edition numbering. Estler, in fact, went to some pains to explain the difference between the two Bonestell prints and a genuinely limited artist's edition. The accepted convention is for the latter to be numbered in the artist's own hand on the face of each print, with a number indicating the total number of prints and the number of the individual print. For instance, "3/50" would indicate that the print is the third in a strictly limited edition of fifty ("A/P" on a print indicates that it is an "artist's proof"---a test piece not intended to be part of the completed edition). The Bonestell prints were not numbered in this fashion. Additionally, the printing plates or stones of a genuinely limited print are destroyed after a specific---and usually
quite small---number of prints are created. This was not done in the case of the two Bonestell prints. While there have been numerous claims made that exactly 500 copies of the 1000-copy print run of each print were signed and "numbered", this figure has never been established. Nowhere in any of the Estler-Bonestell correspondence does Estler indicate that he had any intention of limiting the number of registered copies to 500. In practice, Estler stamped the prints as signed copies were needed---and some he apparently numbered ahead of the game since there are several extant prints that have numbers but no signatures. If Estler had sold all two thousand copies, all two thousand would have had registry numbers. These numbers, rather than adding value to the prints, as they would if they were true edition
numbers, were intended solely for the purpose Estler took such great care to explain: a means to keep a record of purchasers. A case in point is that in all of the advertisements Estler took out for the prints he himself never described them as being a numbered edition. As things ultimately turned out, no record was kept of any prints sold through third parties---such as museum gift shops---and after Estler's death in 1981, Bonestell signed many unnumbered prints, feeling no special compulsion to maintain a registry in which he had neither interest nor obligation. Both of these facts tended to render the original purpose of the numbers moot.