Collectables

Can you tell your foxing from your deckle edge? Or quire from collation? Here is a handy guide to some of the terms used in the books and works on paper collecting field.

Two upcoming lots at US book auctions.

In what was the auction house’s most successful sale ever in financial terms, and one that boasted a 97% selling rate, a March 4 sale at Potter & Potter (20% buyer’s premium) was led at $65,000 (£49,240) by a 'Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen’s Captivity from the Time of his Being Taken by the British, near Montreal… in 1775, to the Time of his Exchange…in May 1778'.

A selection of 14 upcoming lots from auctions taking place around the UK and overseas.

Three upcoming UK book auctions

Dealer Tim Bryars previews this year’s London Map Fair with an eye on current collecting trends

Though it is the pineapple that is most prominent, it is the assortment of creatures that flutter around, climb or emerge from its leaves that are the principal attraction of this coloured plate, below.

Works offered in Essex saleroom belonged to ‘capable, colourful and forceful’ professor

If social media makes you feel like Big Brother is watching you, and if truth occasionally feels stranger than fiction, then like many bibliophiles you might be exploring books that suggest models for society and the role of the individual.

The six lots described here are drawn from a hugely successful sale of comics and comic art held in Dallas by Heritage (20% buyer’s premium) over four days, from April 7-10.

This Victorian ‘Language of Flowers’ fan was published by Robert Canton c.1875 and is on offer at The Ephemera Society Summer Fair.

But Brexit red tape is the talk of the trade as favourite fair returns to Old Town Hall

Specialist toy sales held in April on either side of the Atlantic have yielded some notable prices for items from two specific categories: toys relating to Popeye and a collection of toy boats.

When the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated on April 15, 1945, a party of British Red Cross nurses and doctors stayed and tended those they could help back to health.

A small group of Riccardi Press limited editions, each title produced in runs of 500 copies for the Medici Society, were offered in an April 7 sale held by Thomson Roddick (18% buyer’s premium) of Carlisle.

Letter to adviser in 1592 underlines her frustration at the French king’s policies

Until the widespread advent of the wireless, barrel organs were a familiar sight (and sound) on the streets of Berlin and other major German cities.

Photographica is back on Sunday, May 22, at the Royal Horticultural Society in London.

First published 1817, Joseph Walker’s 'The Shepherd’s Guide' has been updated many times and is still in use today, noted Bill Nelson of 1818 Auctions.