Latest News Articles by Ian McKay
British and Irish book auctions: May 15-25, 2018
14 May 2018ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from May 15-25, 2018.
Corruption, catechisms and cacti
14 May 2018Mexican lots, one of them relating to the working of a silver mine in the 16th century, produced some of the higher bids in a recent Americana sale.
Rare Michelin guide leads to five figures
14 May 2018The first Guide Michelin was published in 1900 and no fewer than 35,000 copies were printed for the World Fair in Paris, where it was was distributed free of charge to motorists.
British and Irish book auctions: May 8-18, 2018
07 May 2018ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from May 8-18, 2018.
Beautiful bindings at South Cerney auction
30 April 2018A volume containing Richard Hooker’s sixth and eighth books dealing with The Lawes of Ecclesiastical Policy… is a 1651 re-issue of an edition first published three years earlier. The principal attraction, however, was the armorial binding.
First golf book tees off in the US
30 April 2018Published in 1895, Wright & Dixon’s Guide to American Golf… was one of the very first books on the game to appear in that country. A copy sold on April 12 in San Francisco for $42,500 (£29,930) was billed as “perhaps the only copy extant”.
Celestial work lights up Glos sale
30 April 2018First such pocket atlas published in England leads a look at highly diverse auction selection
Russian album is crowning glory at US auction
30 April 2018Printed for circulation only among members of the imperial family and those foreign dignitaries who had participated in the celebrations, an album recording the 1883 coronation in Moscow of Tsar Alexander III and the Empress Marie Feodorovna sold for $30,000 (£21,125) in a US sale.
British and Irish book auctions: May 1-12, 2018
30 April 2018ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from May 1-12, 2018.
Complete 17th century work is a great rarity of Judaica
30 April 2018Bound in recent times as six volumes in elaborately gilt crushed scarlet morocco, a 1614-17 Prague first of a major commentary on the Mishnah by Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (1579-1654), was a highlight of a recent New York sale of Judaica.
British birds and natural history fly high in New York
23 April 2018Sold for $300,000 (£214,185) apiece in a recent New York sale were three very well-known works from the worlds of cartography and natural history.
Word on the street is of a Ravilious ‘record’
23 April 2018Brought into a free valuation day held at Bishop’s Cleve, near Cheltenham, a copy of Eric Ravilious’ High Street sold on March 27 at what would appear to be a record sum in a Derbyshire sale.
From Dickens to a dodgy bishop
23 April 2018Running to 600 lots and achieving £560,000 hammer, a recent London sale incorporated a wide range of collecting fields, from Dickensian theatrical ephemera to children’s books and all things Irish.
British and Irish book auctions: April 25 to May 5, 2018
23 April 2018ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from April 25 to May 5, 2018.
Music marks abolitionist’s return from exile
16 April 2018Composed to mark the departure from these shores after two years of self-imposed exile in Ireland and England, a Farewell Song of Frederick Douglass, on Quitting England for America – the Land of his Birth was published in London in 1847.
Lady, can you spare a dime?
16 April 2018Rather slimmer than he is seen in the later films that are perhaps his principal memorial, this ink self-portrait by the comedian, juggler and actor WC Fields dates from his earlier, vaudeville years.
Journals detail journeys all over
16 April 2018Collection of more than 100 travel accounts is one highlight of a varied London auction.
A passage to Serindia
16 April 2018An estimate of £120-150 was never going to do for a lot in a Leominster sale of March 28 that was catalogued, in full, as “STEIN, Sir Aurel, Serindia, a Detailed Report of Explorations in Central Asia and Westernmost, four vols, and a box with maps (5)”.
Sailing off to Iceland
16 April 2018Something of a rarity, To Iceland in a Yacht appears to have no other auction appearances to its name. It was privately printed in Edinburgh in 1873 for its author, the chemist Robert Angus Smith (1817-84), a man best known for his work on air pollution and his identification of what later came to be known as acid rain.
John Piper and others fire a salvo for Russia
09 April 2018One of just 100 copies of a scarce, privately published edition of poems called Salvo for Russia, produced in 1942 in aid of the ‘Comforts Fund for Women and Children of Russia’, was offered in a recent West Country sale.