Collectables

MAY is traditionally when the Swiss wheel out their most spectacular sales of Classical coins. This year’s offering (981 lots) came on May 10-11 at Leu (Zurich).

A POSTCARD sent by Joyce to the publisher Elkin Mathews sold for €12,000 (£8170) in a May 18 sale held by Mealy’s in Dublin.

TWO records of witchcraft trials in 17th century Lübeck were among the more successful lots in an April 19 sale held by Swanns of New York.

THIS punting scene by Whistler is one of some 3000 additional original and reproduction etchings and engravings, mostly full-page and many mounted and titled in ink as well as being mounted, where possible opposite the relevant text, that were to be found in an extra-illustrated 1880, third edition of Philip G. Hamerton’s Etchings & Etchers seen at Bonhams on May 6.

IN a general sale held by Bloomsbury Auctions on May 13, a copy of J.M. Richards’ High Street of 1938 that was signed on the front free endpaper by W.J. Bassett-Lowke, the proprietor of one of the shops illustrated in the work’s coloured litho illustrations by Eric Ravilious, was sold for £1150.

THE way Bonhams’ (17.5% buyer's premium) empire has adapted to the received wisdom that specialisation is a key to today’s macro auction environment is to have niche markets catered for at different outposts. Among the areas catered for at the Midlands branch at Knowle are such widely known ones as mechanical music and railwayana and, in ascending degree of arcane nature, wireless sets, optical instruments, firemarks, truncheons and tipstaffs.

THE Ephemera Society holds its Summer Special Fair at Le Meridien Russell Hotel, Russell Square in London’s Bloomsbury on Sunday June 13. Expect more than 100 tables covered with greetings cards, newspapers, magazines, autographs, playbills, menus and all manner of paper collectables.

LONG before Heineken, Allsopp & Sons’ Burton ale had a claim to be the beer which reached the parts other beers could not reach – bottles of it accompanied Sir George Strong Nares’ expedition attempting to reach the South Pole in 1875.

EXPECTED to sell for £1m or more at Sotheby’s on June 22 is the Macclesfield Psalter, an unrecorded illuminated manuscript, made in England in the early 14th century, that came to light only when the saleroom was asked to sell the contents of the 18th century library of the Earls of Macclesfield at Shirburn Castle.

CONDITION is nine-tenths of the law in toy collecting and that explains the remarkable level of interest in this No.2 Special Pullman train set, pictured right, which turned up at Bonhams Edinburgh (17.5% buyer premium) on March 25.

A children’s and illustrated sale held by Pacific Book Auctions of San Francisco on May 13 included a collection of Oz books by L. Frank Baum.

AN April 29 sale held by Bloomsbury Auctions presented an enormous selection of children’s, illustrated and private press books that ran to nearly 900 lots. While there was much to admire in the other sections of the sale, I shall concentrate on the children’s books for this report. A great many of the lots came from one fine collection in which many of the books contained a bookplate designed by Pauline Baynes.

The ABA’s annual Antiquarian Book Fair, which this year will be opened by the writer Frederick Forsyth, will run from June 3-6 at Olympia. Illustrated and/or very briefly described here are half a dozen items promised by dealers from Britain and the USA.

MORTON and Eden continue to make great strides considering how short a time they have existed. On April 22 they held their first sale abroad – in Milan in collaboration with Sotheby’s. Indeed, that firm is descended from the now closed Sotheby’s coin department.

IN this busy spring season – the busiest for some years – Spink’s have been batting hard. March 31 saw a fine sale which netted £626,750. But, not content with that, they fielded another 632-lot sale a fortnight later, on April 15. Again this sale referred mainly to British and related coins. However, the first 131 lots were devoted to the ancient world.

SALES of Victoria Cross groups continue to set new auction records.

AT Gorringes’ (15% buyer's premium) April 27-29 sale, specialist Aaron Dean was satisfied with the reaction to some 200 lots of silver but, with the market for routine tea services and so on remaining fairly moribund, it is the smaller collectables which catch the eye.

Despite the important nature of many items being sold to militaria and weapons specialists at the Marlow rooms of Bosleys (15% buyer's premium) on March 10, there were, as usual, a number of more domestic objects included.

MOVING just South of the Border to Jack Dudgeon (10% buyer's premium) in Berwick-Upon-Tweed, and echoes of one of the key incidents of the Second World War provided keen specialist interest at their April 19 sale.

THE first part of the Maurice F. Neville collection of modern literature, which sold for a premium-inclusive $5.22m (£2.95m) at Sotheby’s New York on April 13, was primarily but certainly not wholly focused on the work of American writers. Seen here are two of the English books that brought strong results.