[Honus Guy]

The two soft clay pieces are of plastilen, I think it's called. Still pliable and very fragile 50-plus years after Frank Vittor created them. Shipping was not an issues when I won the auction because I live in the Chicago area and picked them up.

I nearly lost all three pieces last year. We had a house fire, and the room they were in was destroyed. They were in a showcase, so the damage from fire, smoke, water and the collapsing ceiling was limited, but they still got tossed around and broken by a cleanup crew that had no idea what they were. The plaster statue was broken in two, and there were a couple of chips as well. One of the soft models (the study of Honus' head) was broken into nine chunks. The third, the Wagner bust, was snapped in two.

I contacted a guy I know, an art restoration expert who used to be a honcho conversator at the Art Institute of Chicago. This isn't the kind of work he does, but he put me in touch with a friend who restores everything from 15th Century paintings to statues. I took the pieces to Dimitri's studio, along with several "before" photos. He looked at both carefully. "Do you think they can be saved?" He chuckled. "Oh yes." And three weeks later, he had completed the work. It was a spectacular job (and it cost more than what I paid in the auction). The soft pieces are as good as new; on the plaster version, the got it back togehter and even added a bat (which had been broken off in the years before the auction). All three are now in a new showcase, along with a program from the April, 1955, Forbes Field dedicaton of the statue and a photo of sculptor Vittor holding the plaster maquette.