Chairman of the board of Parliament Enterprises, Persky has loaned the collection to the Union League Club of Chicago, where he has chaired the art committee and served on the board.
The Seven Lively Arts murals will be unveiled Friday, Sept. 20, in the fourth-floor Rendezvous room during the private club's annual homecoming celebration, "A Night at the Oscars." Another Chicago attorney, J. Dillon Hoey, currently chairs the ULC art committee.
The seven paintings, each approximately eight feet tall and four feet wide, once hung behind the bar at Riccardo's, a restaurant on Chicago's Rush Street. Five of them were there nearly 50 years until the place closed in 1995. Two had been sold in the 1970s.
Created by an eclectic group of Chicago artists to represent the arts of architecture, painting, sculpture, dance, drama, music and literature, they were first unveiled in 1947. They were commissioned by restaurateur and art patron Ric Riccardo, who painted the depiction of dance.
"This collection of the Seven Lively Arts delighted the many celebrities, broadcasters, writers, editors and people of the Chicago art community who patronized Riccardo's famous establishment," Persky said.
"It was our own midwestern version of the Paris Left Bank, with singing waiters joined at times by Ric Riccardo himself," he said. "I'm very pleased to be able to restore and preserve this unusual piece of Chicago art history."
A participant in a Depression-era Works Progress Administration program, Riccardo opened a Parisian-style bistro in 1935 that was one of the first Chicago restaurants to have outdoor seating during the summer months. He hung his own paintings on the walls, along with those of a different artist every month.
Riccardo recruited six other WPA artists to join him in executing the massive lively arts pieces. They were Ivan Albright, his mirror-twin brother Malvin Marr Albright, Aaron Bohrod, William Schwartz, Rudolph Weisenborn and Vincent D'Agostino.
The artists all became famous, especially Ivan Albright, who is remembered as the creator of the grotesque painting in the 1945 film, "The Picture of Dorian Gray." Albright's contribution to the Seven Lively Arts series is "Drama (Mephistopheles)."
Riccardo reportedly was the model for the figure of Mephistopheles, but the legs are those of Albright's wife, Chicago newspaper heiress Josephine Medill Patterson Reeve Albright.
Over the years, pieces of the collection were sold and held by various art patrons, Persky said. When he decided to reassemble the Seven Lively Arts, he found the Ivan Albright in New York and the Bohrod in Connecticut. The others were purchased from the family that acquired the restaurant from Riccardo.
Ironically, Persky had owned Albright's "Drama" previously, and it was the property of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City for several years before being deaccessioned to a private collector.
Persky was first introduced to Riccardo's in its heyday by Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz. Putting the collection back together has been "the fulfillment of a fantasy," he said.
Persky also helped secure a replica of one of French architect Hector Guimard's century-old, graceful art nouveau metro station entrances from the city of Paris. It was installed earlier this year at the Metra commuter train station on the east side of Michigan Avenue at Van Buren Street.
An ardent supporter of the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks and the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, Persky is a 1952 graduate of the DePaul University College of Law.
He practiced law for 25 years before beginning to invest in residential real estate. His company owns and manages apartment buildings throughout the Chicago area (ISBA Bar News, July 15, page 6).
A gremlin in the font file erred in bold-face type on the front page of the August 15 issue with the wrong area code for ISBA President Loren S. Golden. Tennis doubles team challengers may call him at (847) 289-5700.
It wasn't "principles," but "principals" such as Allen Schwartz that the Chicago firm of Robbins, Schwartz, Nicholas, Lifton & Taylor has lost through retirement (July 15, page 9). Thanks to sharp-eyed Judge Theodore Paine of Decatur for enjoining the homonym.
Dean Henry H. Perritt Jr. of the Chicago-Kent College of Law has decided not to seek reappointment when his term ends in December, contrary to previous information published on page 10 of the August 15 issue.
Jane Stuart to be new chair of Illinois Judicial Council
Cook County Judge Jane L. Stuart will be installed Thursday, Sept. 12, as chairperson of the Illinois Judicial Council. She will succeed Judge Gay Lloyd Lott, a former member of the ISBA Board of Governors.
The organization's 20th annual installation and awards reception will take place from 5 to 8 p.m. in the Red Lacquer Room of the Palmer House Hilton, Chicago. Music will be provided by the KCR Ensemble, led by Judge Blanche M. Manning on saxophone.
Judge Stuart, a member of the ISBA Assembly, is immediate past chair of the Bench and Bar Section Council. She also serves on the Committee on Women and the Law and the Committee on Bar Elections Supervision.
Other incoming IJC officers are Judges Cheyrl D. Ingram, chairperson-elect; Drella C. Savage, secretary; Rodney Hughes Brooks, assistant secretary, and Vanessa A. Hopkins, treasurer.
Awards will be presented to outstanding community leaders, and the IJC Foundation will present scholarships to law students. Justice Ellis E. Reid, a past chair of the council, is chair of the reception committee.
Two unique programs on the legal career of President Abraham Lincoln are scheduled for presentation in Springfield in the coming weeks.
At 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 14, the Illinois State Historical Society will sponsor a free public lecture at the Old State Capitol in cooperation with the Old State Capitol Foundation and the Sangamon County Historical Society. Refreshments will be served.
Stacy Pratt McDermott, an assistant editor with the Papers of Abraham Lincoln, will discuss "A Lincoln, Divorce Lawyer: Family law in early Sangamon County and its impact on Lincoln's Law Practice."
A doctoral student in history at the University of Illinois in Urbana, McDermott is the author of two chapters on women and the law in "In Tender Consideration: Women, Family and the Law in Abraham Lincoln's Illinois." Call (217) 525-2781 for more information.
The Illinois Historic Preservation Agency will conduct the fourth annual Conference on Illinois History on Thursday and Friday, Oct. 3-4, in the Springfield Hilton Hotel.
The conference program includes discussion of Lincoln's legal practice and presentation of papers about the Civil War and the culture, literature, archeology, politics and geography of the period.
Jack White, author of "People and the Illinois Prairie," will be the keynote luncheon speaker on Thursday. Architectural historian R. Stephen Sennott of the Illinois Institute of Technology will speak during the Thursday banquet.
Costs for attending the conference are the $30 registration fee, $20 for the lunch and $35 for the dinner, with a deadline of Friday, Sept. 27. Call Donna Lawrence, (217) 785-7933, for more information.
Take law office along with pocket printer, scanner
By Alan Pearlman
The Electronic Lawyer
As a lawyer on the go in our upbeat mobile world of today, I am always on the lookout for the best and smallest profiles for printers and scanners, so that I can be truly mobile, without giving up the use of that utility.
Until now most, if not all, of the printers and scanners that tout themselves as mobile are, in reality, still very large, heavyweight units that fail to perform like their bigger sisters and brothers.
I searched the market place and found two items that are musts if your practice takes you on the road more than half of the time. Pentax Technologies now offers two truly mobile solutions.
The first product is a fabulous printer, the Pentax PocketJet 200 Ultra-Portable. Without a doubt it is one of the smallest, lightest and most effective printers for all your on-the-go needs. The PocketJet 200 gives you sharp, clear resolution, crisp graphics and extremely high quality documents no matter where you go.
I found this unit to be an excellent addition to my practice out of the office, especially when in court during a settlement conference in chambers. After we have come to agreement on the new draft of one of my documents, instead of going back to the office, making changes, and sending the document back and forth, I merely print the corrections right there.
It surely makes my clients much happier to get on with the agreement and their lives, than to have to wait and reschedule a next court appearance.
If you are anything like me, you take pride in the look of your documents, and you may be wondering how does this unit measure up to a laser-quality printed document. I can safely say that you will be more than amazed at the quality look and feel of your documents.
OK, so now that your interest is sparked, let me tell you how Pentax does all this and the advantages over other printers that you have with this unit.
First, the unit's resolution is 203 x 200 dpi (dots per inch for the non-techies), with a print speed of up to three pages per minute, and supports Windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT, 200, ME, CE, EPOC, all palm units, Pocket PC units and even my Blackberry OS.
This unit really packs a large punch for only weighing in at 1.2 lbs. with the battery installed. It yields up to 40 pages, either 8.5x11 or 8.5x14, in one charge.
As for print quality, I was very skeptical at first, wondering how my pages would turn out, but after my first page, I knew that this was the printer for me. I wondered how do they do this with an almost laser quality to it.
Upon inquiry, I learned that the unit uses something called "Direct Thermal Printing Technology." In non-tech terms, this means that you never have to change ribbons, print heads, cartridges and the like. No matter how many pages I print, I never worry about running out of ink.
The secret is in the paper. The unit uses specially designed thermal paper from Pentax. I confess that I carry around about 50 to 100 sheets with me on the road, and I have never yet run out of paper. I always love the look, feel and quality of my documents.
Besides my unit's ability to work on battery power, it also uses an A.C. adapter, and your choice of Serial, Parallel, Infrared, or USB Interface Cable.
I especially enjoy using my inferred attachment to the printer, allowing me to print directly and without cable from my Pocket PC to the printer. Inferred printing has also come in handy from my laptop to my PocketJet200.
A second item I must mention to you now almost the twin sister to the PocketJet200 is the Pentax DSmobile USB Scanner. This unit is a compact, lightweight, high-quality scanner for all your needs on the road. It weighs a mere 12 ounces, measures 11 inches long, and is the ideal scanner for any confined space.
The scanner has a simplified sheet-fed design that allows you to scan everything from business-card to legal paper sizes in one simple, easy-to-use unit.
Because I am absolutely into no-bulk items to carry at any cost, the DSmobile gets my vote. It has no bulky power supply unit. All of its operational power is drawn directly from my laptop, and it consumes less power than most other units I have tested. You can scan while you run your laptop on battery power.
Pentax also has developed an advanced scanning module, the CIS (Contact Image Scanner) optical module, which operates with fewer moving parts than the traditional CCD (Charge Coupled Device). This almost eliminates the chances of a mechanical breakdown of the unit.
The DSmobile also supports Microsoft's R WindowsR 98, ME 2000 or XP, or for that matter any PC that has a USB port and accompanying software to access USB services. For you tech-support junkies, Pentax offers free service for the life of the product an offer you can't refuse!"
If you do a lot of courtroom work and/or are out of the office for a large portion of your day, I cannot recommend too highly the use and benefits that you will receive from the Pentax PocketJet200 printer and the DSmobile USB scanner. Sometimes I often wonder how I made it through my day in court or at the airport without them.
FACTS: The Pentax PocketJet200 printer and the DSMobile USB scanner are products of Pentax Technologies, Broomfield, Colo. For further information, call (800) 543-6144 or access www.pentaxtech.com.
* * *
Northbrook attorney Alan Pearlman serves on the ISBA Assembly, the Committee on Legal Technology and the Law Office Management and Economics (Standing Committe on) Council, and is a member of the Editorial Board of the ABA General Practice Technology and Practice Guide. He is co-author of "The Busy Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Word for Windows '95," published by West Group. Contact Pearlman at pearlman@lectrniclawr.com.
St. Clair Bar program is on famed 'Lawyer Parden'
A program on the life of former East St. Louis defense attorney Noah Parden will be presented during a meeting of the St. Clair County Bar Association on Wednesday, Sept. 26, at the Jackie Joyner Kersee Youth Center in that city.
"Lawyer Parden was the patron saint of black attorneys," said 20th Circuit Judge Milton S. Wharton (see photo), president of the bar association and a past chair of the Fellows of the Illinois Bar Foundation.
Guest speaker for the program will be Mark Curriden, co-author of "Contempt of Court: The Turn-of-the-Century Lynching that Launched a Hundred Years of Federalism," which chronicles Parden's defense of an illiterate black man accused of the 1906 rape of a white woman in Chattanooga.
"Noah Parden was born into slavery," Wharton said. "He worked his way through school and became a famous criminal defense lawyer. He risked everything in taking up the defense of Ed Johnson."
After losing attempts to have Johnson's hasty conviction and death sentence overturned in Tennessee, Parden went to Washington, D.C., to appeal directly to Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan.
Harlan, who had been the only dissenter in Plessy v. Ferguson less than 10 years earlier, granted a stay based on denial of due process. A day later, Dec. 19, 1906, Johnson was murdered by an unruly Chattanooga mob that hung and shot him.
Noah Parden subsequently moved to Colorado for a short time before relocating his law practice to East St. Louis. He was admitted to the Illinois bar in April 1907 and was known respectfully as "Lawyer Parden" by the black community. He died there in 1944.
Mark Curriden, a lawyer and journalist in Dallas, and his co-author, Chattanooga attorney Leroy Phillips Jr., had Johnson's conviction set aside by a Hamilton County criminal court judge on Feb. 25, 2000.