Woodcut

The Gart der Gesundheit is one of the giants in the field. The most important herbal of the 15th century, it contained the finest illustrations of the incunable period and was unsurpassed until the appearance of the first edition of the Brunfels herbal in 1530.

Sotheby’s Olympia clinched the week’s loftiest price for an Asian work when a mighty £480,000 was placed by a Japanese telephone buyer probably bidding against the reserve for a complete set of Ando Hiroshige’s (1797-1858) 120 woodblock prints: The One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.

UK: ONE of numerous full-page woodcut illustrations of bridles, bits, etc. to be found in a 1602 Naples first of Piero Antonio Ferraro’s Cavallo Frenato..., bound in contemporary limp vellum, that sold at £1950 (Traylen) in the Dominic Winter, Swindon (buyer's premium 12.5 per cent) sale.

US: ONE of 167 illustrations which make up Frans Masereel’s My Book of Hours, one of the woodcut novels pioneered by the Belgian political cartoonist in the early part of this century.