Collectables

The antiquarian book trade is lobbying for changes to the proposed EU law designed to crack down on imports of cultural goods ‘more than 250 years old’.

Running to just over a hundred pages and containing numerous illustrations of ships, figureheads and portrait busts, an accounts ledger kept by a Cumbrian shipbuilder has gone to a local museum.

Newly formed Australian firm Abacus Auctions holds its second sale on July 22, devoted to coins and banknotes plus a selection of collectables and sporting memorabilia.

Fabrizio Govi of Libreria antiquaria Alverto Govi (Italy) and Govi Rare Books (New York) was elected vice-president of ILAB this year.

Pitched at £100-150, a small North American Native woven pouch attracted interest from London, Continental and US specialists at Tennants’ (23% buyer’s premium) Militaria & Ethnographica offering at Leyburn.

Some 240 lots in a recent two-day book sale in Norfolk came from the library of local authors and collectors David and Patricia Cory, with science fiction, fantasy, ghost stories and crime fiction very much in evidence.

Comprising some 3000 books that range in date from 1473-1840, one of the finer collection of books on agriculture ever assembled will be dispersed by Forum Auctions in a July 10-11 sale that runs to more than 800 lots.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from July 3-12, 2018.

This hitherto unknown iron – part of select group of perhaps a dozen very early golf clubs from the late 17th or early 18th century – emerged at Gorringe’s in Lewes on June 26.

Dating from 1944, the ink, watercolour and gouache artwork shown belowwas made by Russell H Tandy to illustrate the cover of The Secret in the Old Attic, the 21st of Carolyn Keene’s ‘Nancy Drew’ mysteries.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

From her Dorset cottage, artist and print-maker Rena Gardiner (1929-99) produced more than 40 guidebooks to historic places, buildings and the countryside, all of which she wrote, illustrated with drawings made directly onto litho plates and printed herself.

The mammoth disposal of the Aristophil collections of historic manuscripts began last week with a premium-inclusive €17.6m series of seven June auctions offered over four days at Drouot (June 15 and 18-20).

Three 18th century English carved and painted wooden dolls, in the same family for over two centuries, were sold at Specialist Auction Services of Newbury on June 19.