German manuscript of Lenten sermons from the very early 15th century – £19,000 at Gorringe’s.
Sold at £19,000 in the Lewes rooms of Gorringe’s (23% buyer’s premium) on January 25, the very early 15th century volume of sermons, now contained in a parchment binding from which five metal bosses have been removed, opens with a section in which the sermons are noted by Heinrich Kothewicz as having been completed in his own hand in November 1401.
The majority, however, are those of Jacobus de Varagine (1228-98), an Italian chronicler and Archbishop of Genoa who is best known as the compiler of the Legenda Aurea, a collection of the lives of the saints and one of the more popular religious works of the medieval era.
Toy story
1922 first of The Velveteen Rabbit… – £6000 at Gorringe’s.
Very, very different was a 1922 first of Margery Williams Bianco’s The Velveteen Rabbit, or How Toys become Real. In the original pictorial boards and dust jacket, and illustrated with chromolitho plates after William Nicholson, it sold at £6000.
