96 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT 



workers in these materials, and created an environment 

 well calculated to develop a taste for such work in the son. 

 The most decisive influence, however, was exerted by a very 

 competent ivory carver, George Steffens, of Nuremberg, 

 who was expert in designing, drawing, and engraving, as 

 well as in sculpturing ivory, stone, and wood. As an eight- 

 year-old boy, Mr. Kaldenberg would often stand behind 

 this worker's chair and watch him giving an artistic form 

 to one of the different materials he worked on. The boy's 

 first essays on his own account were diffidently submitted 

 to this trained artist, who, however, was so favourably 

 impressed with them that he undertook to give the youth- 

 ful aspirant regular lessons. At this time, just before our 

 Civil War, art did not receive the encouragement it does 

 to-day, and the gifted Steffens had to content himself 

 with a room on the top floor of a Division Street tene- 

 ment house. Thither the would-be carver hied himseK 

 every Sunday morning. Although this impromptu course 

 of study lasted but a few years under this master, its effects 

 were lasting, and when as a young man Mr. Kaldenberg 

 went to Europe, he was able to make a very successful rep- 

 lica in ivory of the famous Venus de Milo, as a proof of 

 what a young American of that time could do. This was 

 16 in. high, and therefore on a large scale for ivory work. 

 Later the artist carved an ivory bust of Rembrandt, 

 now in the collection of the late Mr. George W. Vanderbilt, 

 and a very attractive Mignon bust, 16 in. high and 8 

 in. in diameter, made from a solid piece of ivory. But 

 the increasing responsibilities of a business career were 

 found too absorbing by Mr. Kaldenberg to admit of fur- 

 ther cultivating his art at the same time. 



The great Spitzer Collection, sold in Paris in 1895, was 

 gathered together in the course of many years by the famous 

 dealer and antiquarian, Frederic Spitzer, a Viennese by 



