Collectables

This weekend Oxford hosts the PBFA’s 100-dealer antiquarian and out-of-print book premier fair, one of the largest in the association’s calendar. It is held at the Oxford Brookes Wheatley Campus on Saturday and Sunday, April 22-23.

The March 29 sale by Bonhams (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) of books from the library at Glyn Cywarch featured many highlights.

Torn, punched with holes, creased, wrinkled and showing loss at the folds, an ‘Organizational Clothing and Equipment Record’ used at Fort Hood, Texas, in 1958 would not at first sight seem an attractive proposition.

Charles Rattray was a tobacconist and blender of fine tobaccos at 160 High Street, Perth. The firm occupied these premises from c.1915 until 1981.

First editions of Jane Austen’s most popular book, Pride and Prejudice of 1813, in contemporary bindings don’t come along often. But one such prize – a copy with a rather distant but nonetheless attractive family link – appeared at Mellors & Kirk (20% buyer’s premium) in Nottingham on March 22-23.

A photo collection sold at C&T formed part of an archive relating to Brenda Long, secretary to General Sir H Ismay (later Lord Ismay), Chief of Staff to Sir Winston Churchill from mid-1944 until the end of 1945.

Featured in a recent report (ATG No: 2286), a copy of Sir Charles Doyly’s Views of Calcutta and its Environs that sold for £14,000 at Chiswick Auctions (22% buyer’s premium) on March 22 was one of many lots – both printed and manuscript – that came with a Harrington family provenance.

The Charterhouse saleroom must be under doctors’ orders. Two private collections included in the Dorset April 20-21 auction come from consignors with ‘Dr’ in front of their names.

Research to be followed up or indeed already done boosts the background story and value of a medal group.

One of the more obscure Second World War special forces units was the little-known Raiding Support Regiment. Bosleys (23% buyer’s premium) of Marlow sold an embroidered cap badge from this regiment for £3100 (estimate £500-800) on January 25.

One thing you could never accuse General George S Patton of was being shy. Not that top military men are exactly shrinking violets but even so, Patton is renowned as particularly bombastic. He fits perfectly into the type of American general in the Custer and MacArthur mould, happy to blow their own trumpets.

Published in New York in 1977, The Vanished World Portfolio is a selection of a dozen photographs from the very many that were taken in the late 1930s in Cracow, Warsaw, the Carpathian regions and elsewhere in eastern Europe by Roman Vishniac (1897-1990).

The Arctic Regions, 1873, a sumptuously bound narrative of American artist William Bradford’s seven expeditions to the Arctic, illustrated with 141 mounted albumen photographs, is the highest-estimated lot in the April 20 Swann Galleries photographs and photobooks sale.