Collectables

As in many previous years, the months of June and July signal the arrival of large numbers of important book, manuscript and related sales.

Karl Bodmer, a Swiss artist, was engaged by Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied to provide a pictorial record of his 1833-34 travels among the Indians of the Upper Missouri regions of North America.

ATG's selection of upcoming sale highlights.

For a number of years now ship’s logs have made good prices at auction. Those featuring naval engagements, significant encounters in foreign lands, or with added, if amateur illustration – even logs kept on whalers that use simple sketches to record a catch – offer something extra.

Written in 1960, Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls broke the silence on sex in a socially repressive Ireland, seen through the lives of Kate and Baba, two young Irish country girls yearning for love who move from rural Ireland to Dublin to find it.

“In order to prevent the further slaughter of Dublin citizens, and in the hope of saving the lives of our followers, now surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, the members of the Provisional Governments present at Head Quarters have agreed to an unconditional surrender…”

As part of a five-year plan to grow its interest in the coin collecting market, The Royal Mint has taken a share in Mayfair numismatic dealership Sovereign Rarities.

Featuring more than 70 decorative or historiated initials in full contemporary colour, a fine copy of a Biblia germanica printed by Gunther Zainer of Augsburg in 1475-76 sold for a record €120,000 (£103,450) in a Ketterer Kunst (20% buyer’s premium) sale.

Barbara Chalk runs Rare and Antique Books, an online book dealership, with her husband Robert.

Cleaned, restored and recently rebound in brown buckskin, together with a 1966 reprint, a rare 1495 Venetian first of Avicenna’s Metaphysica made €26,000 (£22,260) in a Reiss & Sohn (18% buyer’s premium) sale. The price was slightly under estimate but a record nonetheless.

The Charing Cross Collectors’ Market, at the bottom of Villiers Street, near Charing Cross Station, has to be one of the longest running niche fairs in London.

Comprising what amounted to a crowded Regency household, fully and elegantly furnished and inhabited by half a dozen bisque or parian dolls, a c.1820 mahogany dolls’ cabinet was the outstanding offering from C&T Auctioneers (18% buyer’s premium) in Tunbridge Wells.

The library of William O’Brien, an Irish-born QC and High Court judge in the Victorian era, sold for a premium-inclusive £2.8m at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on June 7.

Written by Judge Advocate David Collins, secretary, close friend and adviser to Governor Arthur Phillip, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales of 1798-1802 was the last of the so-called ‘First Fleet’ journals to be published.