Collectables

The original doctorate certificate awarded to Albert Einstein by the University of Zurich in 1905 will be a highlight offering at Bonhams in New York.

“It’s not often we offer for sale a library of nearly 200 volumes by the same publisher as a single lot – and certainly not one that fits in a small suitcase.”

The Edison Class M cylinder phonograph was initially intended for business dictation but in time entertainment became its main role.

The Jewellery, Watches and Objects of Vertu sale at Dix Noonan Webb (25% buyer’s premium) in London on March 15 included more fine silver and enamel vesta cases by Sampson Mordan & Co to add to those sold by the firm in September 2021.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Potter & Potter’s Fine Literature & Modern Firsts Sale on April 26 in Chicago includes a copy of Oscar Wilde’s (1854-1900) The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

Many of the lots in an Oxford sale of February 23 formed part of the estate of Canadian linguistic and literary scholar, the late ‘Paddy’ Docker-Drysdale.

Billed as the star lot in a sale that ended on February 27, a scarce copy of the 1937 first issue of Dandy made a high-estimate £3450.

California dealership Denenberg Fine Arts has sold a full set of 80 prints from the Jugendstil magazine PAN to Chicago’s Driehaus Museum.

Running to 63 photographs, a virtually complete set of those produced for Carleton Watkins’ 1863 publication '…Photographic Views of the Falls and Valley of Yosemite' in Mariposa County, California featured in a January 27 sale at Nate D Sanders (25% buyer’s premium) of Los Angeles.

The original artwork for Queen’s A Day at the Races sold for £21,000 (estimate £5000-10,000) at Gardiner Houlgate (22% buyer’s premium).

The latest Photographica sale at Chiswick Auctions (25/12% buyer’s premium) included this rare set of 'China Through the Stereoscope'.

The best-seller at $400,003 (£296,300)* in a recent sale at RR Auction was a doubly signed receipt in which Johann Sebastian Bach acknowledges payment of the sum of five guilders under the terms of Sabina Nathan’s legacy.

A round-up of current catalogues from folk-art at the rescheduled Winter Show to the Mellor-Cobham collection of English porcelain at Albert Amor

Sold online at £5500 in a February 2 sale held by Catherine Southon (24% buyer’s premium) at Farleigh Court Golf Club in Surrey was a copy in full mottled calf gilt of the first European edition of the works of Confucius (551-479BC).

Venetian edition of Commedia, lunar map and account of Polar voyages surface in Milan.

This 1930s pencil and gouache for the Lawn Tennis Championship Meetings was a poster design for London Underground.

News earlier this month of the discovery of Endurance, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s expedition ship, in the icy waters of the Weddell Sea in Antarctica, will surely have made the hearts of dealers and collectors of polar material beat a little faster.

During the 19th century visitors seeking out idyllic lakeland views caused a mild tourist boom in the southwest corner of Ireland.

Our regular listing of upcoming British and Irish book sales.