Philip Kaplan

Born: 1903 in Grodno, Russia.

Died: 1990 in California.

Philip Kaplan was born in Grodno, Russia, and he emigrated as a child to the United States with his parents and siblings in 1911, ultimately settling in Cleveland, Ohio. Kaplan left school after eighth grade and began working a number of different jobs. At 19, Kaplan discovered Richard Laukhuff's bookstore at 40 Taylor Arcade introduced him to a lifelong love of literature and art. As he recalls, "It was the collection of German art books such as Die Junge Kunst that started me on my career as an artist." He soon found work as a self-taught artist, painting murals in homes, schools and businesses in the Cleveland and Pittsburgh areas, and winning awards in the Cleveland Museum of Art's annual shows in 1929 and 1930.

In the mid-1920s, he also joined the modernist Kokoon Arts Club—sometimes called the "Cocaine Club" for its risqué annual ball—serving in time as the club's secretary (1927) and president (1932). In this capacity, he notes, "I played an important part in the development of Day-Glo," likely in conjunction with the Club's 1938 "Black Light Ball." During these years he also founded and became president of the local chapter of the fledgling American Artists Congress; promoted as "an effort to bring together artists of note for the purpose of improving their general welfare," it also opposed fascism and was part of the popular front of the Communist Party USA.

Kaplan married his wife, Esther Rose, in 1933, and soon after had a daughter, Luba. In 1939, his career took him to Kings, New York, where he served as executive art director for a large advertising agency. He also worked with S.W. Hayter's experimental printmaking group Atelier 17, for whom he created a series of intaglios.

In addition to being an artist, he was also an avid collector of both art and literature, amassing thousands of books, periodicals, manuscripts and other literary works. He began collecting Aleister Crowley material around 1931 and was in close contact with Crowley's successor Karl Germer and other Crowley collectors such as Gerald Yorke and Norman Robb. Through his contacts he amassed a huge collection of Crowleyana.

Kaplan wrote to Yorke introducing himself thus: "In the past 25 years I have acquired almost all of his [Crowley's] printed material. Crowley appeals to me from a literary rather than a hocus-pocus angle." In another letter, he mentioned, "By the way, I know a few people who knew A.C. when he was in America. Samuel Jacobs (Aiwas) is a good friend of mine and Ben Abramson the bookdealer who published Pan."

In 1958 a box of rare Crowley books and manuscripts that Crowley himself had lost during his visit to the United States was found in a Detroit storage warehouse. This collection was purchased from the warehouse by Robert Lund. Later that year Lund decided to sell this collection to Kaplan. Full details of the story may be found HERE.

In 1959 Kaplan decided that the Lund collection along with the large amount of Crowleyana he had amassed on his own would be better of in an institution and arranged the sale of a collection through a book dealer. Kaplan's collection was sold to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin. This collection forms the backbone of the Center's Crowley collection and with the later addition of the J.F.C. Fuller collection made the Ransom Center's holdings second only to the Yorke collection at the Warburg Institute.

Kaplan's influence on the preservation of Crowley's works achieved a level comparable to the missions of Karl Germer and Gerald Yorke.