Monday, May 31, 2010

Auction Report: Upcoming

Another pretty hefty round of auctions are sneaking up on us:

- On 2 June, Christie's London will sell Valuable Manuscripts and Printed Books, in 90 lots. A Tchaikovsky music manuscript is expected to be the highlight (est. £200,000-300,000). An illuminated Middle English manuscript on vellum of The Book of John Mandeville (c. 1440) is also expected to sell well, with estimates of £150,000-200,000. Other highlights are expected to include first editions of Boccaccio's Genealogiae Deorum (1472) and De montibus, silvis, fontibus (1473), bound together and a first edition of Darwin's Origin owned by Darwin bibliographer R.B. Freeman (each est. £50,000-80,000).

- Also on 2 June at Christie's London, the first sale of Malcolm S. Forbes Jr.'s Winston Spencer Churchill collection, in 144 lots. Lots of interesting things, but the high seller is expected to by Churchill's WWII engagement diary, which is estimated at £80,000-120,000.

- Christie's London will sell Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts on 7 June, in 345 lots. Highlights are expected to include a 58-volume collection of c. 350 pamphlets, with 50 of the volumes uniformly bound (est. £20,000-30,000); Kepler's Harmonices mundi libri V (1619), with "erasures" bringing it into compliance with the papal index of 1640 (est. £7,000-10,000); a fair number of incunabula, &c.

- Sotheby's will sell the collection of Patricia Kluge on 8-9 June in at on-site sale at Albemarle House, outside Charlottesville, VA. You can tour the sale here, watch a preview video, and browse the catalog. This is mostly artwork and furniture, but it includes 38 book lots, beginning at Lot 305.

- Sotheby's London will sell Music and Continental Books and Manuscripts on 9 June, in 203 lots. A Franz Schubert autograph manuscript is expected to be the top seller, est. £40,000-60,000. A Bach manuscript could fetch £30,000-50,000, and an 1821 Beethoven letter is estimated at £30,000-40,000.

- The Sotheby's Milan sale on 16 June will feature a few lots of books, beginning with Lot 173. The expected top seller among the books is a 1478 Aritmetica de Treviso (est. 50,000-70,000 Euros)

- At Sotheby's New York on 17 June, the next round of sales from the James S. Copley library will be held: the single-lot sale will feature a 1776 Salem broadside printing of the Declaration of Independence (est. $600,000-800,000), and the big sale will be Arts & Sciences, Including the Mark Twain Collection, in 556 lots. This is an extremely impressive selection. The top seller is expected to be Twain's autograph manuscript of "A Family Sketch" (1897), estimated at $120,000-160,000.

- Also at Sotheby's New York, on 18 June, a sale of Books and Manuscripts in 96 lots. Some more really pricey goodies here, among which are John Lennon's manuscript of "A Day in the Life" (1967), estimated at $500,000-800,000. Another expected top seller is a 1591 first edition in English of Orlando Furioso (est. $100,000-150,000). Other items of note are two archives of J.D. Salinger letters and a copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle.

- On 22 June, Christie's New York will sell Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts, Including Americana, in 321 lots. Again, a tremendous number of interesting things in this sale, so do browse through - among the top expected sellers are a 1478 edition of the Ptolomaeus Cosmographia (est. $600,000-800,000); Berlinghieri's Italian atlas of 1482 (est. $300,000-400,000); a 1933 Einstein speech manuscript and an 1823 Stone engraving of the Declaration of Independence on parchment ($250,000-300,000). They're also trying again with the very notable 1787 Ethan Allen letter to Crevecoeur that failed to sell last June (est. $40,000-60,000), and an unfolded copy of the 1833 Declaration engraving made for Peter Force's American Archives is estimated at $30,000-40,000.