Collectables

Offered as a part of the natural history section of a May 14 book sale at Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) is an extremely rare photobook on New Zealand ferns by Herbert Boucher Dobbie issued c.1880 – no copy of which, it seems, has previously been seen at auction.

The inscription London on the barrels of this pair of 19th century, silver-mounted flintlock pistols is entirely spurious.

A very rare panorama of London that made £90,000 in a recent West Sussex sale was the Pick of the week in ATG No 2387, but many other things among the 200 lots offered in that April 5 auction caught the eye.

A 1782 first of James Stewart’s 'Plocacosmos: or, the Whole Art of Hair Dressing' illustrated with 10 plates showing hairstyles was offered as part of a Forum Auctions sale.

A large oil on panel map by MacDonald Gill celebrating the presence of stationer WH Smith on the British high street in the 1920s was hammered down at £50,000 in Gloucestershire.

Estimated at just £50-80, an Alice Davis Hitchcock medallion sold for £3000 (plus 20% buyer’s premium) at a Spink auction in London on April 10.

Detailed down to pneumatic tyres, knock-off hub caps and rack-and-pinion steering, the clockwork toy of Alfa Romeo’s P2, the world-beating racing car between 1924-30, was produced by CIJ (Compagnie Industrielle du Jouet) from 1924-35.

Something of a roll call for the great and good across the British 19th-20th century arts scene, Lyon & Turnbull’s (25% buyer’s premium) Decorative Arts: Design Since 1860 sale included such names as George Washington Jack, Sir Alfred Gilbert, Christopher Dresser, William de Morgan and Robert Bartlett.

Bid to £19,700 in a recent sale was one of 100 signed, large paper firsts of Oscar Wilde’s 'The Importance of Being Earnest' published by Leonard Smithers in 1899.

British and Irish book auctions: April 16-27, 2019

First published in 1936, The Negro Travellers’ Green Book was a once indispensable guide for African-Americans in the age of segregation.

Given that the sale ran to a huge 1139 lots, the April 2-4 dispersal in Harrogate of the first part of the library of Robert James Hayhurst may be considered to have done well in achieving a selling rate of 85% at that gathering of Elzevir and other early printed works.

Meeting all the criteria for Tunbridge ware collectors, this workbox on stand below was one of the top buys at Greenslade Taylor Hunt’s (19.5% buyer’s premium) sale at Taunton on April 4.

A bound volume of early works on a famous automaton chess player, featured in ATG No 2387, was not the only lot in a recent Cumbrian sale to produce a handsome return.

A late 19th century gold bone-handled Arab dagger was hammered down at £4100 at the inaugural sale of Knightsbridge auction house Kings Russell (22% buyer’s premium).