Bohemian Club & Grove Posters, Books, and Ephemera at Turner Auctions

Turner Auctions + Appraisals will present Bohemian Club Books & Ephemera on August 10 featuring more than 200 lots of 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. 

The items, from a California collector, range from 1909 to the 2000s and 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 such as 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. 

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.

Founded in 1872, the Bohemian Club was created “for the association of gentlemen connected professionally with Literature, Art, Music, Drama and also those who, by reason of their love or appreciation of these objects and their interest in participating in Club activities, may be deemed eligible…The Club is social in nature and purpose with its focus on the fine and performing arts and literature.” Early on, science was added to the “four pillars” of literature, art, music, and 
drama. Proud to be a refuge for artistic and intellectual activities, conducting business is prohibited.

While members’ names are not made public, many notable men are known to have been Bohemian Club members including Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Xavier Martinez, William Randolph Hearst, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Since its inception, there have only been four women in the club, honorary members chosen in the club’s first two decades, although  women and other guests are included at many of the club’s events.