Turner Auctions + Appraisals is pleased to present Bohemian Club Books & Ephemera on August 10, 2024. The sale features over 200 books, booklets, posters, flyers, programs, playbills, invitations, wine lists and menus, and reports from the private men’s club based in San Francisco and Northern California. These offerings from a California collector range from 1909 to the 2000s. Several related lots from other collections round out the sale.

The offerings in this auction reflect a vast range of events held at the Bohemian Club in San Francisco or the Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, California, where the Midsummer Encampment, an annual 18-day members’ retreat, is held each July. The sale features Bohemian Grove posters from 1956-2005 and Cremation of Care posters from the 1970s. Besides plays from 1913 and 1919, there are playbills for the Grove plays; and programs for diverse events – art exhibitions, ladies’ nights, “low jinks” evenings, tribute dinners, aviary and more. The extensive selection of events flyers or invitations includes those for film, music, comedy, opera, theater, jazz, anthropology, holidays and Oktoberfest, authors, sons & grandsons, golf, baseball, skeet, Vienna, Italia, veterans, and much more. Most of these ephemera date from the 1950s-early 1980s. Some menus and wine lists are also available. Prominent artists of these lots include Ray Sullivan, Phil Frank, George Lichty, Wayne Pope, Amado Gonzales, Antonio Sotomayor, Vincent Perez, and Lonnie Bee.

Besides printed material promoting the club’s numerous events, there are also official documents from various years, most from 1908-1940, including the President’s and Treasurer’s Reports, and the club’s constitution, by-laws, rules, and annals.