Forum Auctions

Highlights from London auction also include art historian’s collection and extraordinary Orwell oddity

'Plumb-pudding in danger or State Epicures taking un Petit Souper' is the most famous of all James Gillray’s satirical caricatures and perhaps the most well-known of all Georgian political cartoons.

Dreweatts and Forum Auctions are to hold their first joint sale this month.

First part of a collection which covered the walls and cellar of two whole flats is offered at auction

First and only published volume of South American work appears in London saleroom

A couple of ballet-related lots danced away for high prices over the summer.

Boasting what have been described as the first accurate anatomical illustrations of the foetus in utero among its 39 engraved plates, a 1761, second edition of William Smellie’s 'Sett of Anatomical Tables… of the Practice of Midwifery' was one of the highlights of an online-only Forum (25/20/12.5% buyers premium) sale of September 15.

Bid to £9500 rather than the suggested £150-200 was a copy of the first, and possibly only edition ever seen at auction of William Knight’s A Concordance Axiomaticall…

Catalogued as a ‘very good, complete copy in original condition of the first really modern scientific book published in England’, a 1600 first edition (Peter Short) of De Magnete by William Gilbert is estimated at £10,000-15,000 in Forum Auction’s Fine Books, Manuscripts & Works on Paper sale in London on September 29.

Bearing as its title ‘Certain Directions for the Sending of Men and Comodities, & Cattle to Virginia’, a 10pp secretarial manuscript thought to date from c.1609 proved a major attraction in a July 14 sale held by Forum (15/20/12.5% buyer’s premium).

Gastronomy-themed books spanning five centuries were offered in a London auction.

The queen’s menacing message to Protestant courtiers makes an auction appearance

Bid to £2800 via thesaleroom.com in a Forum Auctions (25/20/12.5% buyer’ premium) sale of May 5 was this seemingly very rare broadside published in London by James Catnach.

Two volumes of poetry offered in London auction were published by the Marvell Press.

Recently found in a Norfolk attic, a full set of Canadian scenes by the military artist and topographical draughtsman Major General James Pattison Cockburn (1779-1847) sold for £130,000 at Forum Auctions (plus 25% buyer’s premium).

Negotiating the sometimes complex world of prints by the 17th century Dutch Master

Market continues to thrive and evolve as a new chapter begins in the Forum Auctions story

If social media makes you feel like Big Brother is watching you, and if truth occasionally feels stranger than fiction, then like many bibliophiles you might be exploring books that suggest models for society and the role of the individual.

Street view by British artist offered in Orientalist sale sells at four times estimate

The expansion in prices for David Hockney (b.1937) has affected not just his large and famous works which now sell for multi-millions but also his smaller drawings and printed works that fall further down the price scale.