Surplus

Last week the 180-year-old London firm of Henry Graves, Ltd. sent their entire surplus stock of 100,000 steel engravings to be boiled down to 50 tons of fine paper pulp. If put on the market the engravings would have brought no more than a shilling apiece. Cost of paper and printing for the 100,000 was $200,000.

In the lot were 800 copies of William Powell Frith's famed "Railway Station." Old Graves gravers, sniffing at modern art prices, remember that this heavily varnished canvas was the artistic sensation of 1862. Royal Academician Frith sold the picture outright for $22,500 and received another $3,750 for waiving his right to show it in the Academy. When it was put on private exhibition, 21,150 people paid to see it in seven weeks, most of them subscribing for copies.

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