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Permalink Reply by Joey Farino on April 4, 2019 at 5:32pm

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Permalink Reply by Woody2Shoes on April 5, 2019 at 11:16am

Is this a business card, or the top portion of Hotel stationary. I assume it's the latter, but as there's nothing to scale it against and no mention of size, I wanted to ask first.

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on April 5, 2019 at 11:21am

It seems a few bat orders and stories start or end at this hotel in 1930 and prior.

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Permalink Reply by James on April 5, 2019 at 1:30pm

It looks pretty good to me.  See what others think.

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Permalink Reply by Woody2Shoes on April 5, 2019 at 2:35pm

It does look very good. Almost too good. It's Ruth's signature, no doubt about that.

My concerns are:

1) Placement and angle. It's almost perfect. I don't think I could place my own signature in a more geographically perfect spot if I used a ruler and plotted precise coordinates beforehand! It looks like it was engineered into that precise spot.

2) Lack of any feathering whatsoever. Not even a minute amount.

3) Lack of any "heavy" areas of ink at the points where Ruth introduced the nib to the paper. This is atypical of fountain pen signatures.

4) The feeling that I've seen this exact signature before, verbatim.

I'd have to see it in person and under a scope to study the track (which I can't see here) to eliminate an imprint as a possibility.

But that definitely is Ruth's signature. My only concern would deal with if he wrote it, or by means of an imprint.

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Permalink Reply by James on April 5, 2019 at 3:28pm

All valid concerns, definitely.

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on April 5, 2019 at 4:06pm

I agree. The linen textured paper also "helps".

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on April 5, 2019 at 4:10pm

As I posted, I agree with Woody and felt the same - but it also seems rather odd to me, without the benefit of hindsight, the history of this hotel and Ruth, to trim this signature in this fashion - why? The letterhead/hotel name(cache) literally gets top billing and more devoted space. This makes me nervous.

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Permalink Reply by Woody2Shoes on April 6, 2019 at 2:45am

Eric wrote: "to trim this signature in this fashion - why? The letterhead/hotel name(cache) literally gets top billing and more devoted space. This makes me nervous."

Yes. It has an "artificial" look to it, in the way that a stamped baseball compares to one hand signed.

And I'm still looking through my files to see if I saved the Ruth signature example that looks just like this one. No luck yet.

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Permalink Reply by Woody2Shoes on April 7, 2019 at 12:46pm

I've been looking, but I still can't find the authentic Ruth signature that bears an exact or real close resemblance to the characteristics of this one.

Also, the reason why my first question was about scale; business card or cropped stationary, is because the size of the signature is strange in either case. As is the typical range of size for Ruth, too large if this is cropped from normal sized stationary, as well as too small a typical signature if this is a normal sized business card.

I'll keep looking for the exemplar that I think matches this verbatim.

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on April 7, 2019 at 1:04pm

It appears at least two edges are trimmed, perhaps 4. I also note as I am sure Woody knows a lot of hotel stationary at these times was closer to 5x7 or so. The letterhead logo/style won't be much help because that crest was right on the building  - I'd not expect much changes through those years there.

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