Books and Works on Paper

A Great Blue Heron as seen by John James Audubon proved the unexpected avian star in a $3m-plus sale featuring mostly natural history prints, maps and atlases held by US saleroom Graham Arader (22% buyer’s premium) on October 28.

An extraordinary family archive of engineering and architectural drawings and designs for the projects of Marc Isambard Brunel (1769-1849), offered in 14 lots, sold for a total of £224,500 in a Bonhams (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale of November 15.

Described as the ‘Proustian Holy Grail’ by Sotheby’s Paris (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium), one of just five special copies printed on Japanese paper of Marcel Proust’s Du côté de chez Swann sold for a premium-inclusive €535,000 (£471,780) in a sale of October 30.

An exceptionally rare, complete copy in a 17th century binding of Hernán Cortés’ Praeclara Nova maris Oceanii Hyspania… of 1524 sold for a six-times estimate €240,000 (£212,390) at Hartung & Hartung (20% buyer’s premium) in its November 6-7 auction.

British bee books formed an unusual feature of a November 8 sale held by Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium).

George Orwell is the focus of a first look at a November 7 Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale of books from The Library of an English Bibliophile, the seventh in that series to have been held since 2010. Orwell’s books made a significant contribution to the overall total.

Natural history works, together with books, prints, even pictures featuring aspects of hunting, were a key component of a Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale of November 2 billed only as The Library of a European Gentleman.

It was in poor condition and lacked the backstrip, but a copy of The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-winkle offered in the book section of a Greenslade Taylor Hunt (19.5% buyer’s premium) sale of November 2 was redeemed by the presence of a presentation inscription.

Harry Clarke worked for three years on his first major book illustration commission, an edition of the Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen commissioned by Harrap.

Originally published in parts in the years 1804-12, George Brookshaw’s Pomona Britannica contains 90 colour-printed and hand finished aquatint and stipple-engraved plates of fruits then cultivated in Britain (pineapple pictured below).

A letter that Edward Lear wrote in 1881 to a friend to whom he intended to dispatch two drawings of Athens was among the more successful lots that Bloomsbury Auctions (24/18/12% buyer’s premium) sold on October 19.

Musical manuscripts, letters and photographs of composers offered at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on October 26 comprised the first part only of what was described as “a distinguished private collection” of books that is to be dispersed next year.

It looks very tatty, but the dust jacket shown below is apparently a rare variant featuring a classic 1937 design by Alex Jardine for a 1927 first ‘Coronation’ edition of the Café Royal Cocktail Book.

Featuring both real and mythical creatures, including a monstrous selection of denizens of the deep, this map of Iceland with its mountains, fjords, rivers, glaciers and a volcano is one of the more famous found in Ortelius’ Theatrum orbis terrarum.

A botanical collection formed over several decades by DF Allen of Washington DC and sold on October 26 by Sotheby’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) was small in numbers but focused on the exceptional.

Earlier works in an October 18 sale held by Cheffins (22.5% buyer’s premium) included a scarce 1688 first of Randle Holme’s The Academy of Armory, or a Storehouse of Armory and Blazon, an heraldic work by the third member of a distinguished Chester family of heraldic painters and genealogists to bear that name. It made £1200.

A brief letter of 1864 in which Ulysses S Grant agrees to General William T Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea’, a bold plan to destroy Atlanta, then march across Georgia to Savannah or Charleston during the American Civil War, sold for $100,000 (£75,755) on October 19, at Heritage Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) in Dallas.

Dated by the Edinburgh auctioneers to c.1815-17, a group of watercolours made on a voyage to the Middle and Far East was bid to a far higher than expected £13,000 in a 650-lot Lyon & Turnbull (25/20% buyer’s premium) sale of October 11.

The October 17 Swann Galleries (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale focused largely on early printed medical, scientific and travel books but also included, at $24,000 (£18,180), a first edition in Greek of the works of Herodotus.

Dating from 1812, this pair of terrestrial and celestial library globes of 12in (31cm) diameter was made by the well-known London firm of John & William Cary.