Auctions

SOLD for £2200 (C.R. Johnson) at Bloomsbury Auctions on August 19 was a Batchelor’s Directory.., a work. of 1694, which goes on to describe itself as ...a treatise on the excellence of marriage; of its necessity, and the means to live happy in it: together with an apology for the women against the calumnies of the men. Bound in contemporary red morocco gilt, this first edition was catalogued as “a dedication copy from the author”, but to whom, we are not told.

SOME canny detective work by both the auctioneer and the buyer seems to have come up with answers to most of the questions surrounding this intriguing unsigned mid-19th century miniature on ivory, right, offered by Neales (15% buyer’s premium) of Notttingham on September 9. The 4 x 3in (10 x 7.5cm) miniature, presented in its original Victorian frame in a glazed easel display case, had been entered by a private vendor who had no idea of either sitter or artist.

IN rebacked and refurbished contemporary calf, the copy of Hobbes’ Leviathan... seen at a Dominic Winter sale of August 25 was a 1651 first edition, but both the engraved additional title and main printed title were cut down and relaid, the folding table was torn and repaired and there was some browning and dampstaining.

SOTHEBY'S (20/12% buyer’s premium) September 14 sale offered a selection of watches and wristwatches in their Bond Street sale that realised a total of £424,500 with selling rates of 67 per cent by lot and value.

SOMETHING I overlooked when compiling my principal natural history round-ups of the summer was a copy of ‘Philip Miller’s Gardener’s Dictionary’ – or at least that was how it was described in a 10 word entry in the catalogue of a May 21-23 sale held by Northeast Auctions of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

AN August 21-22 sale held by Northeast Auctions of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, included not only the panoramic view of Hong Kong seen top right, but a dozen or so other views of the Hongs at Canton, Hong Kong itself and other European trading settlements in China.

HIGH spot of the Asian works of art section of Skinners’ July 17 sale in Boston was an $85,000 (£49,945) bid on a pair of 16th/17th century, cane-seated hardwood ‘Official’s Hat’ chairs from the collection of Professor James Hightower. In a post-sale announcement, Skinners Asian specialist described them as “quintessential examples... and undoubtedly the finest pair of hat chairs to have come on the market in decades”.

SOLD at £1650 in a July 6 sale held by Lawrences of Crewkerne was a group of ten volumes, mostly in contemporary full or half calf, that were grouped under the heading ‘Scandal’.

BILLED as the top gun on the catalogue cover of the September 1 sales at Lewes arms and armour specialists Wallis & Wallis (15% buyer's premium), this c.1649 German or Dutch 34-bore wheel lock pistol lived up to its reputation.

AN escaped slave who became a prominent social reformer, journalist and public official, Frederick Douglass (1817-95) published a first account of his life in 1845, but revised and extended versions followed in 1855 and, finally in 1881 as The Life and Times...

IN a 19th century binding of blue straight grained morocco, a 1548, first English language edition of Bishop Edward Fox’s The True Dyfferes between ye regall power and the Ecclesiastical power, translated from Fox’s 1534 Latin original by his friend and admirer, Henry, Lord Stafford, was sold at £1400 in a July 6 sale held by Lawrences of Crewkerne.

HANDSOMELY bound in dark crimson morocco gilt in the 19th century, a 1609, first folio edition of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, the titles to the two parts with large and elaborate woodcut devices (both with small amounts of early colouring) and containing numerous woodcut head- and tailpieces incorporating various royal devices and symbols, made £1740 (Powell) in a Dominic Winter sale of July 21.

RIGHT: one of 23 coloured aquatints by George Hunt after M.E[gerton] that make up Airy Nothings; Or, Scraps and Naughts, and Odd-cum-Shorts; in a Circumbendipus Hop, Step and Jump, by Olio Rigmaroll, a slim quarto volume of 1825, this one shows ‘Quadrille Dancing at Mr Owen’s Institution, near Lanark’ – the model community established by social and education reformer Robert Owen at the New Lanark cotton mills.

RIGHT: translated by William Hamilton, the 1661 first English edition of Blaise François de Pagan, the Comte de Merveilles’ Historical & Geographical Description of the Great Country and River of the Amazones in America..., contains this important folding engraved map showing French ambitions in the area.

JAMES Sillett was a jobbing artist from the Norwich School of painters, who worked on a broad spectrum of projects including heraldic painting and stage scene decoration, but he is best known as a competent miniaturist.

This rare silk and bullion embroidered doll’s or child’s dress from the first half of the 18th century will be offered at auction on September 27.

THERE were two copies of Sailing and Fighting Instructions for His Majesties Fleet in a Sotheby’s New York sale of June 17.

OFFERED as part of a Lawrences of Crewkerne sale of July 6 was ‘The Valehouse Collection of Letters to Mrs W.K. Clifford’. Though little read nowadays, ‘Lucy’ Clifford was immensely popular in late Victorian and early Edwardian times and was even classed with Edith Wharton, Joseph Conrad and H.G. Wells as one of those whose books “will never die”.

THE 30 plates, all India proofs on heavy paper, that make up an 1857 volume of Etchings for the Art-Union of London by the Etching Club include three by Samuel Palmer – one shown right.

WITH the frontispiece and all but the last of the 34 double-page or folding engraved plates and plans in full contemporary colour, Isaac Commelin’s Histoire de la Vie & Actes memorables de Frederic Henry de Nassau, Prince d’Orange of 1656 sold for $32,000 (£17,580) in a Christie’s New York sale of June 9.