
A rare ballot box made from a human skeleton used by Yale’s famed secret society Skull and Bones is going on the auction block during Christie’s Important American Furniture, Folk Art, Silver & Chinese Export sale in New York on Jan. 22. Just the thing to decorate your digs while sporting one of DQ’s gangster chic ties, it would make one hell of a cufflink box. Offered by an unnamed European art collector and estimated at $10,000 - $20,000, it comes with a book containing the names of about 50 Skull & Bones members, including President William Howard Taft, along with their photographs.
The skull is fitted with a hinged flap and is believed to have been used during voting at the society’s meetings in the Tomb, the Skull and Bones building on the Yale campus. In addition to Taft, both presidents Bush, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, businessman and diplomat Averell Harriman, publisher Henry Luce and author William F. Buckley, Jr. were members or “bonesmen”. Quite the club.
© Copyright 2010 Duncan Quinn. All Rights Reserved.
