Latest News Articles by Ian McKay
Ticking off the profits and losses
09 July 2018Sold for $32,000 (£24,060) at Christie’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on June 14 was an Edison Universal Stock Ticker.
Wyndham wakes in Norfolk
02 July 2018Some 240 lots in a recent two-day book sale in Norfolk came from the library of local authors and collectors David and Patricia Cory, with science fiction, fantasy, ghost stories and crime fiction very much in evidence.
Drewdunnit: cover story of a teenage sleuth
02 July 2018Dating from 1944, the ink, watercolour and gouache artwork shown belowwas made by Russell H Tandy to illustrate the cover of The Secret in the Old Attic, the 21st of Carolyn Keene’s ‘Nancy Drew’ mysteries.
Museum’s shipshape local purchase
02 July 2018Running to just over a hundred pages and containing numerous illustrations of ships, figureheads and portrait busts, an accounts ledger kept by a Cumbrian shipbuilder has gone to a local museum.
Forum lays down the agricultural Lawes
02 July 2018Comprising some 3000 books that range in date from 1473-1840, one of the finer collection of books on agriculture ever assembled will be dispersed by Forum Auctions in a July 10-11 sale that runs to more than 800 lots.
Portrait of a beautiful county
02 July 2018From her Dorset cottage, artist and print-maker Rena Gardiner (1929-99) produced more than 40 guidebooks to historic places, buildings and the countryside, all of which she wrote, illustrated with drawings made directly onto litho plates and printed herself.
One hump lot or two at Sotheby’s?
25 June 2018Camels are the linking theme of the two lots illustrated here, so a verse by Ogden Nash copied below seems to fit the bill.
Shakespeare, fables and a fantastic codebook result
25 June 2018The earliest publication in any form of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar came with its inclusion as part of the 1623 First Folio, and in a recent US sale a bound set of the 22pp that it occupied in that great work prompted a six-figure bid.
Second World War German codebook breaks into six figures
25 June 2018For many years now, German Enigma code machines have been making big, sums at auction, but in the Bonhams New York June 12 sale a slim codebook relating to their use also prompted a much, much higher than expected and six-figure bid.
British and Irish book auctions: June 26-July 7, 2018
25 June 2018ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from June 26-July 7, 2018.
Audubon Birds of America flies to a top two high
25 June 2018Billed as “the world’s most valuable illustrated book”, the ex-Duke of Portland set of Audubon’s Birds of America offered by Christie’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on June 14 was sold for $8.3m (£6.24m), a price only once bettered at auction.
Mozart is sweet music to an auctioneer’s ears
18 June 2018Consisting of just two autograph leaves, but catalogued as “one of the most important fragments still in private hands”, a manuscript dating from the last years of Mozart’s short life topped a recent London music sale.
Butterfly bids transformed in Hamburg sale
18 June 2018Bound together, first editions of both parts of the 1679-83 edition of Maria Sybilla Merian’s study of caterpillars and their transformation into butterflies, Der Raupen…, sold to a Danish bidder for €42,000 (£32,060) in a sale held by Ketterer Kunst (23% buyer’s premium) of Hamburg.
Plague water, dastardly crimes and good habits
18 June 2018Early manuscript compilations for medical and culinary recipes feature quite regularly and successfully at auction, but an example in a recent London sale was one with a morbid statistical addition that achieved a treble-estimate £15,000.
Saint Augustine’s English ‘City of God’
18 June 2018St Augustine of Hippo’s De civitate Dei (below) was penned to counter pagan claims that what had prompted the Visigoth sacking of Rome in 410 was the adoption of Christianity by its emperors. The book was first printed around a thousand years later in the 1460s, but it was 150 years before a first English language edition appeared.
British and Irish book auctions: June 19-29, 2018
18 June 2018ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from June 19-29, 2018.
Well-known map featured on endpapers of Winnie-the-Pooh returns to auction after nearly 50 years
11 June 2018It was in December 2014 that Sotheby’s put an estimate of £100,000-150,000 on what it called at the time “probably the most famous and evocative illustration of the 20th century”.
Beautifully preserved Hobbit makes £35,000 at Forum Auctions
11 June 2018A beautifully preserved 1937 first state copy of Tolkien’s 'The Hobbit' sold for £35,000 at Forum Auctions.
Goulds lead sale of Dutch zoo library
11 June 2018The Wassenaar Zoo in Den Haag opened its doors in 1937 and closed in 1985, but its wonderful library, essentially untouched since the 1970s, has only now come to auction in London.
Fork handles, not four candles… original draft script makes £28,000
11 June 2018Written in red ink on four sheets, the original draft script of Ronnie Barker’s famous ‘Fork Handles’ TV sketch of 1976 has been sold for £28,000.