Collectables

The dust jacket is far from pristine, but this 1933 first of The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas is signed and inscribed by both its subject and her lifelong partner, the writer Gertrude Stein.

Eleven years after John Kennedy Toole committed suicide, fellow writer Walker Percy was the man who ensured that his only book, A Confederacy of Dunces, finally got into print.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Plastic has gained a bad name when it comes to the environment – clogging up oceans for a start.

It may seem hard to credit nowadays, but photographs of fairies at the bottom of the Cottingley (Yorkshire) garden of two young girls, produced in 1917 as a practical joke, were taken to be genuine by many people – most famously, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Vivienne Knight and Vanessa Turner are two specialist dealers in perfume bottles who will be setting out their vibrant stalls at the two-day International Perfume Bottle Association’s UK convention.

Brought into a West Sussex saleroom some months ago, a manuscript grimoire, or collection of magic spells, invocations and more practical advice on ailments and aspirations, offered quite a challenge to the cataloguer.

This medal documents a little-known moment in the history of the English Civil War. In 1648, following a revolt in the Parliamentary fleet, a number of ships went to Helvoetsluys in the western Netherlands and were organised as a Royalist squadron by Prince Rupert of the Rhine (1619-82).

Taxidermy, having emerged in a few years from a dusty, rather unseemly subject to a rostrum hot topic, continues to flourish across the country.

The next Antique Arms Fair at Olympia in west London will incorporate another key London collecting event, the long-running Park Lane Arms Fair.

Investigation into wine storage is unusual success in computing library auction.

Catching the eye in a German auction was a fine example of the most beautiful of all piscatorial plate books.

Leading New Zealand firm Webb’s – established by Auckland gallery owner Peter Webb in 1976 – became part of Mossgreen in October 2014. Two businessmen and art collectors from the city, Ewen Mackenzie-Bowie and Bruce Qin, rescued the saleroom earlier this year following the collapse of the parent company and a regular calendar of sales is now in operation from new premises in Mount Eden.

The first book printed and published in Antarctica was 'Aurora Australis', a work produced during the 1908-09 Nimrod expedition led by Ernest Shackleton.