Latest News Articles by Ian McKay
Ornate binding is a real beauty
04 March 2019Sold for £900 by Toovey’s (24.5% buyer’s premium) on February 19 was an elaborately bound example of Monsieur Gravelot’s Almanach Iconololgique… for the year 1771.
Days with puppies and fairies
04 March 2019Illustrated with eight hand-coloured litho plates, each with moveable flaps, The Puppy’s Visit To His Friends was issued as one of EC Bennett’s moveable books, probably in the 1850s.
Pincushion points to high price
25 February 2019Late 18th-century works for children combine juvenile diversion with moral instruction.
Navigation advice from 1602
25 February 2019Letters on the sails of the vessels seen on the title-page of Pedro de Syria’s Arte de la Verdadera Navegacion, published in Valencia in 1602, are a reminder that it was Columbus’ voyage in Spanish service just over a hundred years earlier that led to the ‘discovery’ of the Americas.
Marvellous comic price for Spider-Man
25 February 2019Catalogued as the most valuable Silver Age comic book by far, a copy of Issue No 15 of Amazing Fantasy, the 1962 comic that saw the first appearance of Spider-Man, sold for £14,500 in a January 25 sale held by Excalibur Auctions (20% buyer’s premium) of Amersham.
Feynman: ‘The most original mind of his generation’
25 February 2019Richard P Feynman (1918-88), recognised as a genius in the field of mathematical physics and once described as ‘the most original mind of his generation’, was a star turn in a November 30 sale at Sotheby’s New York (25/20/12.9% buyer’s premium).
British and Irish book auctions: February 26-March 9, 2019
25 February 2019ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from February 26-March 9, 2019.
Many mysteries solved and sold
25 February 2019Heritage begins mammoth dispersal of Otto Penzler’s holdings of detective fiction.
British and Irish book auctions: February 19-March 3, 2019
18 February 2019ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from February 19-March 3, 2019.
Famous facsimiles of Declaration of Independence set records
18 February 2019Two examples of a celebrated Declaration of Independence copy hit new highs a month apart.
Framing technique sets plates up to sell well
18 February 2019Drawn from sales held in the last days of January in the UK and US, an artistic device of framing a view with trees in the foreground is demonstrated in the two plates reproduced below.
Alphonse Mucha makes Art Nouveau masterpiece
18 February 2019Shown below is a page from an 1897 Paris edition of Robert de Flers’ 'Ilsée, Princesse de Tripoli' in which the text is framed by 132 coloured litho illustrations, borders and other decorations by Alphonse Mucha.
Tiger of Mysore title works its money magic
18 February 2019As featured on the cover of ATG No 2377, more treasures associated with the ‘Tiger of Mysore’, Tipu Sultan, are scheduled for auction in March at the Antony Cribb sale.
Banker’s private press passion
11 February 2019Close to 300 lots in a recent London sale that focused mainly on private press and other illustrated books came from the library of the late Bruce Beatty, a banker whose artistic and bibliographic collecting preferences included fin de siècle literature.
London auction reveals splendours of La Serenissima
11 February 2019Copies of Giacomo Franco’s Habiti d’huomeni et donne venetiane…, a collection of detailed views and scenes of Venetian life and costume published c.1610, vary in the numbers of plates they present.
British and Irish book auctions: February 12-21, 2019
11 February 2019ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from February 12-21, 2019.
Buyer invests in a very rare work on stock exchanges
04 February 2019A “legendarily rare first edition” of the first book to describe the workings of a stock exchange sold at a high-estimate $300,000 (£238,095) in the days leading up to Christmas.
Kafka comes in at record sum
04 February 2019On January 10, Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) sold a single-owner collection of polar and other travel books – reported in ATG No 2376 – but the Christmas/New Year period was a busy one overall for the North Yorkshire auction house.
Women’s rights… or maybe not
04 February 2019Dated London 1679 in a Cheffins (22.5% buyer’s premium) sale of January 10 was a job lot that included four unframed Hogarth prints, a framed royal proclamation of 1800 relating to the production of grain and a “1679 broadside, printed for T.N. that is headed A List of the Parliament of Women”.
Auction explores Oz theme
04 February 2019Lots relating to explorer Matthew Flinders are particularly topical given that his grave has just been re-discovered in a graveyard under Euston station as part of works for the HS2 high-speed railway line.