Collectables

A controversial Second World War poster by renowned designer Abram Games (1914-96) has sold for what is believed to be an auction record.

These two posters which will be offered for sale by Swann Auction Galleries in New York on August 7 illustrate the convoluted history of the Olympic Games during the Second World War era.

This poster for Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps is one of the rarer entries in Heritage Auctions’ July 27-28 sale of posters to be held in Dallas.

A medal, silver cigar box and ‘oil lamp’ lighter sold at Ramsay Cornish's latest sale in Edinburgh had come by descent from Major Jonathan Leslie Dean (1859-1926). He was a key participant in the defence of O’okiep (1902), the small town in the Northern Cape that was besieged by Boer Commandos from April 4-May 4, 1902, towards the end of the Second Boer War.

Associations including Queen Victoria’s daughter help to boost 17th century manuscript.

Beneath the famous anchor and dolphin device that denotes a product of the Aldine presses in Venice, the final leaf of a 1516 edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses below bears an inscription that reveals the reason this little work in its later vellum binding sold at £6000.

Top lot in a June 6 sale of maps, natural history and other colour plate books held in New York was a rare map by Lewis Evans of what were then still the ‘Middle British Colonies’ in America.

No record exists of any signed, autograph letter in the hand of Mao Zedong being previously sold on the international market, said Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) of the example it offered as part of a June 11 sale of manuscripts, Continental books and music.

The Hammerhead shark plate shown below is not as colourful as many of the other 432 featured in a generally fine and complete copy of Marcus Elieser Bloch’s Ichthyologie… sold recently, but certainly one of the more eye-catching.

Collection from grandson of director of the famous Duvelleroy firm is offered in Paris.

Our listing of British and Irish book auctions taking place from July 23-August 3, 2019.