Books and Works on Paper

Interest in 20th century maps is growing rapidly among dealers, collectors and curators. And some are rarer than you might think, writes Tim Bryars.

ATG’s timeline chronicling the history of book dealing associations from 1906 to 2016…

A selection of forthcoming UK and international auction highlights.

A hundred or so years ago, a group of booksellers gathered in London for their debut exhibition, with a catalogue that boasted no fewer than 15 original William Caxton books.

From Arthur Rackham to Gerald Scarfe, there is a burgeoning market for original illustration art of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Literary anniversaries are a good story to tell to potential sellers but do they bring greater interest and greater prices?

‘As London’s newest specialist auction house, our sponsorship of this ATG supplement is a very natural fit’

With prices lagging behind modern limited editions, Old Master prints may be the market’s best-kept secret...

The name of William Heath Robinson (1872-1944) is enshrined in the Oxford English Dictionary. Definition: “Ingeniously or ridiculously over-complicated in design or construction”.

A selection of stand-out results achieved at auctions in the UK and abroad.

A millennia after the technology was first used in China, the earliest printed images in Europe were created in the 14th century. Simple woodcuts intended for private devotion, they served as cheap substitutes for book illuminations. Few survive today.

A new generation of dealers, auctioneers and fair organisers is keen to show there is a thriving future for the trade.

Tom Lintern-Mole has just finished filming a video in his shop to advertise the latest book fair on YouTube.

No fewer than 840 lots were offered in the bumper April 5-6 sale held by Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium). The most successful of them, at a record £32,000, was a presentation copy of a pioneering work that has been described as “the first practical statement of socialist doctrine”, Robert Owen’s A New View of Society… of 1813-14.

A major attraction in a PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) sale of April 6 was the Samuel Hessel ‘DNA’ collection of scientific papers, journals and books.

A Beatrix Potter collection running to 62 lots got a Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of March 30 up and running.

Offered by Keys (20% buyer’s premium) on April 6, the Sir Malcolm Arnold Collection proved to be a problematic one.

Published in 1631 in Rinteln, a small town in Lower Saxony, Friederich Spee’s Cautio Criminalis, seu de Processibus Contra Sagas is a first edition in much later boards of a book that has been described as the first serious attack on witchcraft trials and their use of torture.

Tintin has had another good day out in Paris. In an Artcurial sale on April 8 a European collector paid €753,000 (£643,815), including premiums and taxes, to buy an ink drawing done by Hergé for the 1937 comic book Tintin in America.

Early children’s books and games provided some of the highlights of a March 15 sale held by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).