- At the Sotheby's London sale of Travels, Atlases and Natural History on 10 November, the total take was 1,425,825 GBP. A fair portion of that was Lot 43, a watercolor album commissioned by Gdansk's Bartell Schachman, 1590. Looks like a pretty spectacular item, and it sold well, fetching £361,250. Lot 161 is also very interesting; a 16/17th century herbarium containing more than 700 botanical specimens, with Latin and German captions and hand-colored illustrations. That made £67,250. Full results here.
Lots of auctions on the horizon. In addition to those previewed here, PBA Galleries will sell Rare Books & Manuscripts in 163 lots on 19 November. Expected highlights include a first edition (1712) of Isaac Newton and John Collins' Commercium epistolicum, a defense of Newton's priority in the Great Calculus Debate (est. $20,000-30,000); a c. 1550 London edition of the works of Chaucer (est. $10,000-15,000); and a bunch of other interesting things.
