The auction was made up from just two collections, the larger part (327 lots) comprising a library formed over 30 years by a person unnamed, but someone who has apparently written books on the Holy Land, and in particular on pilgrimages and travellers in those regions.The remaining 90 lots comprised duplicate maps and a few from the magnificent Erin Laor collection of maps of the Holy Land, now in the Jewish National & Hebrew University Library in Jerusalem.
In such a sale it was inevitable that there would be a copy of the most famous of all illustrated works on the Holy Land, but the six volume Roberts Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia and Egypt which sold at £28,000, an 1842-49 folio issue containing two maps and 241 tinted litho plates, 120 of which are half page, was at least out of the ordinary. The half-page plates are usually found with the text beneath the image and to verso of the sheet, but here, as in the coloured issue, they are on sheets that are otherwise blank. This set was in contemporary half red morocco, now somewhat scuffed.
A first glimpse of the Holy Land
UK: ON March 23, Sotheby’s held their first ever sale devoted entirely to the Holy Land.
