Collectables

A medal, silver cigar box and ‘oil lamp’ lighter sold at Ramsay Cornish's latest sale in Edinburgh had come by descent from Major Jonathan Leslie Dean (1859-1926). He was a key participant in the defence of O’okiep (1902), the small town in the Northern Cape that was besieged by Boer Commandos from April 4-May 4, 1902, towards the end of the Second Boer War.

Associations including Queen Victoria’s daughter help to boost 17th century manuscript.

No record exists of any signed, autograph letter in the hand of Mao Zedong being previously sold on the international market, said Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) of the example it offered as part of a June 11 sale of manuscripts, Continental books and music.

Top lot in a June 6 sale of maps, natural history and other colour plate books held in New York was a rare map by Lewis Evans of what were then still the ‘Middle British Colonies’ in America.

Beneath the famous anchor and dolphin device that denotes a product of the Aldine presses in Venice, the final leaf of a 1516 edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses below bears an inscription that reveals the reason this little work in its later vellum binding sold at £6000.

The Hammerhead shark plate shown below is not as colourful as many of the other 432 featured in a generally fine and complete copy of Marcus Elieser Bloch’s Ichthyologie… sold recently, but certainly one of the more eye-catching.

Vivid and lifelike, the lithograph of an Ariel Toucan shown below first appeared in a monograph by British naturalist John Gould (1804-81), 'The Bird Man'. Despite being in the hand of his wife Elizabeth (1804-41), this, like most of the illustrations in John’s publications, was long considered to be essentially his work.

Our listing of British and Irish book auctions taking place from July 16-27, 2019.

Pleased as the vendors were to be told by Gloucestershire auctioneer Martin Lambert that a 1920s trunk from their late parents’ home could be worth £2000, they were happier when pre-sale interest in Tayler & Fletcher’s recent sale brought a revised estimate of £2500-4000.

An “extremely rare” grouping of military items including a British 1899 issue leather hobnail boot with a shrapnel hole sold for £6500 at a Buckinghamshire auction on July 3.

An 1841 guide to London’s ladies of the night sold by Hansons for £3300 featured recently in ATG (No 2390), and one of the many rarities that emerged from the recent Gloucestershire sale of the late Martin Orsky’s library was a group of four 18th century broadsides advertising prostitutes.

A Colin Dexter first brought one of the higher bids at Keys (20% buyer’s premium) of Aylsham in its June 13-14 sale.

Two musical boxes catching the eye and ear among the small vertu sections at summer silver sales.

For three years now Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) has, in addition to its high-profile auctions, been holding fortnightly, online-only timed sales that in their diverse content, it feels, act as a useful bellwether for the book world at large.

The resurrection of vinyl continues apace as was evident when a large collection of classical records offered by Ledbury auction house John Goodwin (15% buyer’s premium) attracted specialist trade and private interest from all over the world.

Stand-out lot in a recent Irish sale was one of the 100 special copies of Ulysses printed on Dutch handmade paper by Van Gelder that James Joyce signed on publication in Paris in 1922.