Latest News Articles by Ian McKay
Original artworks from Ladybird books come to auction in Yorkshire
21 April 2017Ladybird books, or rather some of the artworks produced for the much-loved, original pocket-size books, are to be offered by Tennants of Leyburn in two auctions this year – the first on April 28 as part of a sale of books, maps, manuscripts and prints.
Pearls printed by the Soncinos
18 April 2017A collection of ethical maxims, proverbs and moral reflections compiled by Solomon ibn Gabirol and translated from the Arabic by Judah ibn Tibbon was printed for the first time in Venice in 1484 as Mivchar HaPeninim (Choice Pearls).
Horsepower fails in face of the atmosphere
18 April 2017Otto von Guericke’s Experimenta nova (ut vocantur) magdeburgica de vacuo spatio… of 1672 describes the experiments in which he produced an air pump able to create a vacuum and thus demonstrate the pressure exerted by our atmosphere.
New view of anti-slavery heroine
18 April 2017A carte-de-visite album of the 1860s containing a previously unknown photograph of the abolitionist heroine Harriet Tubman was one of the high points of the March 30 sale held by Swann (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).
To Sartre, amicably yours
18 April 2017A bid of €29,000 (£25,085) – some seven times the estimate – was taken on one of 26 special lettered copies (from a run of 450) of a 1949 Paris edition of Nourritures suivi d’extraits de la Nausée by Jean Paul Sartre in a Venator & Hanstein (23% Buyer’s premium) sale of March 23-24.
Fresh Welsh wonders from white-glove Bonhams sale
18 April 2017The March 29 sale by Bonhams (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) of books from the library at Glyn Cywarch featured many highlights.
Elvis gets the GI blues
18 April 2017Torn, punched with holes, creased, wrinkled and showing loss at the folds, an ‘Organizational Clothing and Equipment Record’ used at Fort Hood, Texas, in 1958 would not at first sight seem an attractive proposition.
Pick of the Week: First edition of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
10 April 2017First editions of Jane Austen’s most popular book, Pride and Prejudice of 1813, in contemporary bindings don’t come along often. But one such prize – a copy with a rather distant but nonetheless attractive family link – appeared at Mellors & Kirk (20% buyer’s premium) in Nottingham on March 22-23.
Hieroglyphical riddles and revolting rhymes in Chiswick auction
10 April 2017Featured in a recent report (ATG No: 2286), a copy of Sir Charles Doyly’s Views of Calcutta and its Environs that sold for £14,000 at Chiswick Auctions (22% buyer’s premium) on March 22 was one of many lots – both printed and manuscript – that came with a Harrington family provenance.
Views of a vanished world wow at auction in Paris
10 April 2017Published in New York in 1977, The Vanished World Portfolio is a selection of a dozen photographs from the very many that were taken in the late 1930s in Cracow, Warsaw, the Carpathian regions and elsewhere in eastern Europe by Roman Vishniac (1897-1990).
Fruits at the root of £3000 result at auction in Exeter
10 April 2017Early children’s books and games provided some of the highlights of a March 15 sale held by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).
Welsh items produce white-glove success at Bonhams auction
10 April 2017With every one of the 531 lots sold, from an oak gateleg table that opened proceedings to a 1925 Douglas motorcycle, the March 29 Bonhams (25/20/15% buyer’s premium) sale of contents from Glyn Cywarch, a Welsh home of the Lords Harlech, was one of those ‘white-glove’ sales in which auction rooms take such pride.
Famous fairy tale author Hans Christian Andersen's jester amuses at auction
10 April 2017Hans Christian Andersen did not confine himself to the fairy tales that are his principal and lasting legacy.
Beardsley shows his devilish side at auction
05 April 2017It may have been under 2in (5cm) high, but a tiny ink drawing by Aubrey Beardsley sold for a sizeable $10,000 (£8000) in a sale of Illustration Art held by Swann (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) in New York on March 21.
Calculations go into orbit
05 April 2017Calculations and notes predicting the orbit of what at the time was a newly discovered and very large asteroid, Juno, brought a bid of £7000 at Bonhams (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on March 1.
Oh! Calcutta! £14,000 show-stopper
05 April 2017Shown here is one of 25 coloured litho plates that illustrate Sir Charles Doyly’s Views of Calcutta and its Environs, a large folio work published in 1848.
Couple of nice little learners
05 April 2017London sale offers ground-breaking grammatical studies from 16th and 17th centuries.
Newton travels to New York
05 April 2017Making its third saleroom appearance in 30-odd years, the portrait in oils of Isaac Newton shown here is one of at least a dozen made in his lifetime.
And then there were two Brothers Karamazov
01 April 2017“Very rare, most extant copies behind institutional walls,” said Swann (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) of a first English language version of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.
Chagall’s ‘Arabian Nights’
01 April 2017Seen here is one of 13 coloured lithographs by Marc Chagall that make up Tales from the Arabian Nights, a special, deluxe portfolio printed by Albert Carman and published by Pantheon Books in New York in 1948.