Einstein's Leather Jacket

Sold today at Christie's auction for $144K, this leather jacket is described as follows:

‘This is an incredibly worn, rather pungent leather jacket, that belonged to Albert Einstein,’ says specialist Thomas Venning, introducing an item of clothing that, for the Nobel Prize-winning scientist, became an unlikely staple — to feature in Christie’s Valuable Books and Manuscripts sale on 13 July.

‘The jacket first appears in a number of photographs of Einstein, taken at the height of his fame in the mid-1930s,’ Venning continues. A shot from 1935 shows the scientist wearing it upon his arrival for a holiday in the Bahamas — ‘improbably paired,’ adds Venning, ‘with a rather natty wing collar’.