Collectables

In a journey starting with the Great Fire and taking in the 1980s, dealer Tim Bryars explores the collecting market for London maps

Kelmscott’s finest achievement is probably its edition of 'The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer'. It is described in Printing and the Mind of Man as “perfect… both in design and in the quality of the printing”.

ATG's pick of books and works on paper recently sold at auction...

A volume containing Richard Hooker’s sixth and eighth books dealing with The Lawes of Ecclesiastical Policy… is a 1651 re-issue of an edition first published three years earlier. The principal attraction, however, was the armorial binding.

Published in 1895, Wright & Dixon’s Guide to American Golf… was one of the very first books on the game to appear in that country. A copy sold on April 12 in San Francisco for $42,500 (£29,930) was billed as “perhaps the only copy extant”.

Printed for circulation only among members of the imperial family and those foreign dignitaries who had participated in the celebrations, an album recording the 1883 coronation in Moscow of Tsar Alexander III and the Empress Marie Feodorovna sold for $30,000 (£21,125) in a US sale.

A classic, rare 1938 poster for the London Underground designed by the Surrealist artist Man Ray is one of the highlights of a graphic design sale to be held by Swann Galleries on May 3.

Bound in recent times as six volumes in elaborately gilt crushed scarlet morocco, a 1614-17 Prague first of a major commentary on the Mishnah by Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (1579-1654), was a highlight of a recent New York sale of Judaica.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from May 1-12, 2018.

Manchester United fans grumbling about the current style of play will be interested to learn that when Matt Busby joined as manager he was contractually obliged to play entertaining football.

Classic camera collectors, users and dealers from around the world will be focusing their attentions this weekend on Photographica, the annual specialist fair organised in London by the Photographic Collectors’ Club of Great Britain.

First such pocket atlas published in England leads a look at highly diverse auction selection

Spink medals specialist David Erskine-Hill is leaving to take over as Lord Ashcroft’s medals curator on the retirement of Michael Naxton.

Brought into a free valuation day held at Bishop’s Cleve, near Cheltenham, a copy of Eric Ravilious’ High Street sold on March 27 at what would appear to be a record sum in a Derbyshire sale.