Latest News Articles by Ian McKay
Six of the best – Caricatures from specialist sale at Bloomsbury Auctions
25 July 2017Bloomsbury Auctions have held specialist sales of caricatures since 2015 and the most recent took place earlier this month. The sale offered a mixture of around 30 lots of modern cartoons and 100 or so lots of much earlier material.
Great Exhibition game unites nations on wooden blocks
24 July 2017Purchased at the Great Exhibition of 1851, the ‘Industrial Exhibition of All Nations’ jigsaw type game shown here sold for £1350 at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) on June 16.
So many results in the pipeline
24 July 2017An extraordinarily rich and varied crop of book sales have taken place this summer.
Children’s classics in the Vienna Secession avant garde
24 July 2017A superb suite of the original ink and gouache drawings – one shown here – made by Carl Otto Czeschka to illustrate a 1908 edition of Die Niebelungen dem Deutschen Volke sold at $290,000 (£224,805) in a Sotheby’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale of June 6 called Important Design.
Thomas More not the merrier at the Tower
17 July 2017Translated from a Paris version that had appeared earlier in that same year of 1535, an 8pp German newsletter giving an account of the execution of Thomas More sold for $11,500 (£9055) as part of the Eric Caren archive at Christie’s New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 15.
First French version of The Little Prince
17 July 2017Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s much-loved tale of The Little Prince was first published in New York in 1943, with Reynal & Hitchcock issuing it in both French and English versions.
Newton was master of the universe but not money
17 July 2017Sold by RR Auction (25/22.5% buyer’s premium) on June 14 was a financial document of November 1721 bearing the signature of Isaac Newton – an order to pay to a Dr Francis Fauquier the dividend due on his substantial investment in the South Sea Company.
Happy birthday to Dickens 12 years late
17 July 2017The Charles Dickens Birthday Book, edited by his eldest daughter, Mary, and illustrated by his youngest, Kate, was published in 1882, 12 years after the writer’s death.
Galileo landmark astronomical work at auction
17 July 2017A 1610 first of Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius, a foundation work in modern astronomy, sold for €320,000 (£278,400) on June 15 at Minerva Auctions (25/18% buyer’s premium) of Rome.
Map marks early view of Canada
17 July 2017Marc Lescarbot’s Nova Francia… of 1609 is an account of French settlements in North America and what we now think of as Nova Scotia and Canada. It predates the more famous first accounts of Champlain’s voyages and discoveries by three years.
Wrighting record wrongs
15 July 2017In ATG No 2292, I noted as a record the £13,000 sale of a copy of Thomas Wright’s Original theory… of the universe… (1750), as part of the Christie’s April 26 sale of the Beltrame library.
Vienna Vesalius is a truly impressive body of work
10 July 2017Andreas Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica is one of those rare epoch-making works, a publication that changes everything in its field and sets a standard for others to emulate.
Fifteen years a slave: a pirate prisoner
10 July 2017A June 16 sale at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne included theological works from the library of Edward Tottenham (1810-53), a cleric whose parishes were in Bath and Wells.
Beano takes magical turn
10 July 2017A further selection of children’s annuals from the Brenda Butler archive, characterised as usual by superb condition, provided some of the highlights of a May 2 sale at Comic Book Auctions (16% buyer’s premium).
Catalan cruises in the Med
10 July 2017Sold for £55,000 by Bonhams (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 14 was a newly discovered and very decorative portolan chart on vellum of the Mediterranean.
Dutch discoveries in a world guarded by Spain and Portugal
10 July 2017The island of St Helena featured in a folding plate from a 1598, first English edition of Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s famous Itinerario – published as Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies – offered by Ketterer Kunst (20% buyer’s premium) on May 22.
Goya flop is now a big auction seller
10 July 2017Preserved in a fine contemporary binding of crimson morocco gilt that seems likely to have been specially commissioned by the artist from Pasqual Carsi y Vidal, a leading Madrid binder, a rare presentation set of Goya’s Los Caprichos prints sold for $500,000 (£393,700) at Christie’s New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 15.
Maths textbook keeps up with the times
03 July 2017The “oldest mathematical textbook still in common use today”, according to Printing and the Mind of man, is that written around 300BC by the Greek mathematician, Euclid of Alexandria.
A lot that should jog the memory
03 July 2017One of the odder lots I have stumbled across in the many June book sales is a worn and soiled 12pp autograph catalogue, or calendar of “35 nude male races held on Kersal Moor [near Manchester] between 1777 and 1811”.
Simply the breast: deluxe Duchamp
03 July 2017Art books in a Ketterer Kunst (20% buyer’s premium) sale of May 22 included one of 15 deluxe copies of a 1950 edition of Harry Roskolenko’s Paris Poems, containing an original watercolour by Zau Wou-Ki and an extra suite of his lithographed illustrations. It sold at €42,000 (£36,240).