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RSB

January the second 1925.

John J. Cunningham, Jr.,
Vandyck Galleries Inc.,
1611 Connecticut Ave.,
Washington, D.C.

My dear Mr. Cunningham :-

Just a line to tell you that I had Mr. Corrado's visit, and that poor man has no idea of what he is talking about. When I realized that he knew nothing about fine furniture, which was very easy to find out, as one of his first words were to admire and call Aubusson a rug which was made in Brussels, a hundred years before the Aubusson factory exhisted, and when I realized also that he had no idea of the value of good things, because he saw in a catalogue which I showed him ^[[,]] the figure 7,770 next to the photograph of a beautiful Beauvais tapestry, which we have here and which comes from Baron Gustave of Rothschild, figure which he thought were dollars, when they are actually pounds, I handed him over to Mr. Haardt who is in our building, and who deals in medium price tapestries.

I just saw Mr. Haardt who told me that he considered also Mr. Corrado as a helpless case, considering that he priced one of his ^[[x in margin]]tapestries to $^[[2?]],000, which is about half the price Mr. Haardt himself paid for it in Europe.

If you think that Mr. Ri^[[t]]ter is really willing to buy some good things for his room, even if not of the rarest end of the finest, to improve his room, and make out of it something refined and not formal, I would gladly pay him a visit the next time I come to Washington, but if he has confidence in the taste and in the knowledge of Mr. Corrado, who impresses me as a very nice and amiable gentleman, I will be very sorry for him.  It might be a question of friendship or wanting to help the man along, but he will have very poor things and chiefly things of no value which they certainly be once they will be in his house 80% less worth less than the price he would have paid for them.

I hope you are enjoying better weather than we have here. We have a snow storm since this morning, and it is very unpleasant to have to cross the street. When are you coming here ? 

I am having a big Exhibition in Chicago, and will leave New York around the 13th. instant.

Transcription Notes:
retained misspelling 'exhisted'