International

US: A Japanese cloisonné enamel vase usurped an 18th century Chinese jade brushwasher – expected to be the star lot – to take pride of place in Sloan’s (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) Asian Ceramics and Works of Art sale on April 2, Washington DC.

FRANCE: The French provinces continue to be a rich source of high-level goods as proved by the sale of this 1760s table de milieu with exuberant ormolu mounts attributed to the Roman bronzier Luigi Valadier, plus a marble top set with semi-precious stones, to the Paris trade for Fr6.4m (£610,000, plus 10.865 per cent buyer’s premium), in the sleepy town of Narbonne, south-west France, on April 1.

TWO men have been charged in the United States in a conspiracy to sell the 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleu, signed by Napoleon and stolen in 1988 from the French National Archives in Paris.

US: IT MAY be 25 years since a copy of the Elegy on Captain Cook, as “composed and and publickly recited before the Royal Academy of Florence” by Michelangelo Gianetti, was last seen at auction, and this 1785 Florentine first edition, engraved throughout and bound in contemporary calf, would also appear to be the dedication copy.

Rightly described as ‘superbe’ this 28mm diameter portrait of Augustus made a slightly over-estimate E290 (£180).

This energetic charging knight of Philip the Good (1355-83) Count of Brabent (27mm diam.) could have been bought for E1250 (£775).

This 26mm diameter bronze of Brundisii (now Brindisi, and still a naval base in southern Italy) with, appropriately, a fine image of both Neptune and the boy on a dolphin, sold for E340 (£210).

Slightly worn, as they usually come, but with a good portrait, this testone of François I (1515-47 – 28mm diam) sold for E170 (£105).

US: THIS etched and engraved writing sheet, published by Edward Langley c.1790 and featuring coloured vignettes of scenes from Capt. Cook’s Last Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, was a a rare item which sold at $6000 (£4140).

GERMANY: ONE of the earliest items available at W.G. Herr’s (buyer’s premium 18 per cent + VAT) latest sale on March 17 was an iron and copper Zunftdose (guild member’s box, right), 81/2in (22cm) tall and engraved Magnus Brock Möller der Hunger 1697, that comfortably cleared estimate with DM7500 (£2400).

US: THE geographical surveys undertaken by George Vancouver, who had also served on Cook’s first and second Pacific voyages, were among the more arduous and significant ever accomplished under a British flag, and though Vancouver himself died on route, his brother John, with the assistance of Captain Peter Puget, oversaw the publication of A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, and Round the World... in 1798.

AUSTRIA: THERE were three prices of over ASch1m (£50,000) at the Wiener Kunst (20 per cent buyer’s premium) modern art sale on March 6, starting with Rudolf Wacker’s 1924 Puppentheater, 25 x 19in (64 x 47cm), a puppet theatre with rag doll, at ASch2.2m (£100,000). The back of the canvas featured another painting, of boats moored in a small marina.

A fine piece of calligraphy in gold of the Mameluks in Egypt (c.1400AD – 26mm diam.) made an affordable E200 (£125).

A fine example of the memorial coinage to Julius Caesar struck by Octavian, this 30mm diameter example with a fine portrait made E1275 (£790).

In a beautifully preserved contemporary, and possibly Austrian binding of blind-stamped calf with brass fittings, this copy of Erhard Ratdolt’s 1482, first printing of Euclid’s Elementa, shows some slight waterstaining to the lower margins, but it remains one of the largest and freshest copies in existence – taller than even the Doheny, Honeyman-Garden and Haskell F. Norman copies.

A superb example of “the quintessential Italian Renaissance book”, a 1545 first of the first Italian translation of Thucydides in a fine Apollo & Pegasus binding made for the famous library of G.B. Grimaldi – a collection of some 200 key works formed under the supervision of the Roman humanist Tolomei. It sold for $140,000 (£96,550).

The former Honeyman copy of the Probier Buchlein... and Bergwerk..., two rare booklets on assaying dated 1524 and ’33 (the latter with two leaves in photocopy) produced one of the shock results of Haskell F. Norman sale in 1998 when it made $80,000 – 20 times the estimate.

A spread from a 1491 first edition of the most comprehensive and richly illustrated medical or natural history publication of the 15th century, the Hortus sanitatis.

Interleaved throughout with blank leaves, 19 of which bear the author’s annotations, this is Jean Baptiste Lamarck’s own copy of his landmark work on the evolution of species, an 1801 first of Systême des animaux sans vertèbres, ou tableau général des classes, des ordres et des genre de ces animaux in a contemporary binding.

The principal focus of the Christie’s Los Angeles sale of February 22 was a collection of Pacific voyages, with particular emphasis on New Zealand, and I shall return to that sale next week (see issue no. 1483) – but there were a few other things as well.