Collectables

Collection of more than 100 travel accounts is one highlight of a varied London auction.

An estimate of £120-150 was never going to do for a lot in a Leominster sale of March 28 that was catalogued, in full, as “STEIN, Sir Aurel, Serindia, a Detailed Report of Explorations in Central Asia and Westernmost, four vols, and a box with maps (5)”.

Something of a rarity, To Iceland in a Yacht appears to have no other auction appearances to its name. It was privately printed in Edinburgh in 1873 for its author, the chemist Robert Angus Smith (1817-84), a man best known for his work on air pollution and his identification of what later came to be known as acid rain.

A selection of RAF-related auction results from across the UK.

According to Chris Albury at Cirencester auctioneer Dominic Winter, an “an absolutely A1 example” of Roger Fenton’s (1819-69) famous photo The Valley of the Shadow of Death would make “£50,000-plus at auction, easy peasy”.

A veteran of the Afghanistan war, a sniper who fought on for 90 minutes after being shot in the neck, is selling his medals in a London auction as he returns to civilian life.

A charity which has sponsored an armourer, a gunmaker and many other metalworkers is the very appropriate cause being supported by The Antique Arms Fair at Olympia.

To mark the centenary of the founding of the Royal Air Force, London auction house Spink is holding a special public exhibition featuring medals and relics on loan from prominent collectors.

One of just 100 copies of a scarce, privately published edition of poems called Salvo for Russia, produced in 1942 in aid of the ‘Comforts Fund for Women and Children of Russia’, was offered in a recent West Country sale.

The central 350-lot section of the auction of clocks, watches and scientific instruments to be held by Skinner in Marlborough on April 20 comprises a single-owner collection of European tools.

Early recipe books can make for absorbing and, to modern readers, occasionally comic or puzzling reading, as demonstrated in three examples from recent sales.

Used to dramatic effect on the cover of the catalogue for a Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale, shown below is one of a collection of around 125 monochrome watercolour drawings of Irish lighthouses and the Irish coastline produced c.1860-67.

The work of the MacMahon photographic studio of Aberdeen, this extraordinary carbon print was made in 1908 and depicts ‘Giant Cod Specimens…’ bought and cured by A&M Smith, a local fish processing and curing business.

Antiques Trade Gazette can confirm that Chiswick Auctions has proof of good title for a rare group of maps and charts, which the auction house sold last month.

A remarkable Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes collection which was consigned to auction by their daughter, Frieda Hughes, ran to some 100 lots and formed a separately catalogued part of a recent Knightsbridge sale.