KOCHI: One of the most interesting stories about autograph collecting is from 1932 when the Waterman Pen Company launched a major campaign to collect autographs in their special albums. More than 150,000 boys and girls under 16 participated. Waterman exhibited the winning albums and the top 30 entries at the 1933 Chicago World Fair and then returned them to the collectors.
There were 333 prizes, comprising 133 cash prizes (including a grand prize of $1000), 100 Waterman Fountain Pens and 100 Waterman Mechanical Pencils. It was indeed an interesting marketing campaign.
During my teenage years (in the 1990s), I remember asking my classmates to write messages and sign autographs on the last day of high school. Getting a celebrity autograph was almost impossible, especially if you lived in a small town. When one of my friends got a signed photo from actor Juhi Chawla, he became a celebrity in school.
The first major celebrity autograph I received was from actor Rajinikanth, who was sitting at the next table when I went for dinner with friends at Hotel Atria in Bengaluru. I have kept an album of all the autographs I have collected from theatre stalwarts such as Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das, and musicians from Jagjit Singh to Zakir Hussain.
My most precious autograph book is of the entire Indian cricket team from a charity dinner after a friendly match. There was a time when I had numerous signed cricket bats — from Nasser Hussain to Chaminda Vaas!
Let’s go back to the history of collecting autographs. The word ‘autograph’ comes from the Greek word ‘autographon’ ,which means ‘written with one’s own hand’. In Greece and Rome, rulers usually sealed their decrees with a wax seal and sometimes they signed their names in ink. The Greeks valued these documents and built some of the first libraries to hold them. But it was the Romans who seemed to have been the first to collect them.
That trend died when Rome fell in 476 AD. No signature of the ancient Greek and Roman rulers survived.
Collecting autographs became fashionable again during the Renaissance period (1300-1600). Alba Amicorum (friendship albums), which originated in Germany, was the earliest example of an autograph album. Wealthy travellers asked the personalities they met along the way to make entries into the elaborately made books. The album proved how well-connected they were to high-ranking people.
One of the first specialised publications about autograph collecting, Handbuch für Autographensammler [Handbook for Autograph Collectors] by Johannes Günther, was published in 1876 and contains 290 pages. It has since been digitised and is available on the internet as an e-book. Clergyman and writer William Buell Sprague (1795-1876) collected the autographs of the signatories of the United States Declaration of Independence. At the time of his death, he had collected more than 100,000 autographs!
Guenther Mecklenburg (1898-1984) wrote the first modern handbook in the field: Von Autographen-sammeln [On Collecting Autographs]. Published by Stargardt in 1963, it has been out of print for a long time. One of my favourite books in this category is Two Hitlers and a Marilyn by Adam Andrusier. It is a funny yet poignant memoir.
Today, autograph collecting is a dying art as more people are interested in clicking selfies. However, autographs are still sold by auction houses and the industry is worth billions.