Sunday, June 17, 2012

Auction Report: June Sales/Preview

- Bonhams London sold Books, Maps, Manuscripts and Historical Photographs on 3 June, the top lot being Francis Frith's Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem (1858), a collection of twenty albumen photographs. It sold for £337,250. A collection of Howard Carter's papers fetched £109,250.

- On 7 June at PBA Galleries, Rare Americana, Travel & Exploration with Manuscript Material, Maps & Ephemera (results here).

- Swann Galleries sold Maps, Atlases, Natural History and Ephemera on 7 June. The top lot proved to be a copy of the first printed sea chart of New England/New Netherland, printed at Florence in 1647, which sold for $31,200.

- Bloomsbury had a Bibliophile Sale on 8 June; full results here.

- Christie's London sold Valuable Printed Books and Manuscripts on 13 June, for a total of £3,175,987. Top lot was a Bach manuscript, which sold for £337,250. A ~1504 antiphonal created for Elisabeth von Gemmingen made £289,250, and a Richard III letter fetched £109,250. A second edition Copernicus sold for £85,250. Lots of other interesting lots in this sale, too.

- Results for Bloomsbury's 14 June sale of Books, Manuscripts and Photographs are here.

- The 15 June Sotheby's sale of Fine Books and Manuscripts, Including Americana, made a total of $2,671,067. The top lot was an original Apple I computer, which sold for $374,500. A lovely copy of Antonio Fracanzano de Montalboddo's Itinerarium Portugallensium e Lusitania in Indiam et inde in occidentem et demum ad aquilonem (Milan, 1508) fetched $212,500. The original subscription book for the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts made $37,500.

- Bonhams New York will sell Fine Books and Manuscripts including Russian Literature on 19 June, in 450 lots. Some of the material is from the stock of Serendipity Books, including the Russian library of London bookseller Alec Flegon (est. $15,000-25,000). A very nice copy of the first de Bry edition in German of Le Moyne's Florida could sell for $25,000-35,000. The important Revolutionary War diary of Timothy Newell rates a $50,000-80,000 estimate. But it is a manuscript draft of Lincoln's amnesty policy which rates the top estimate, at $200,000-300,000.

- Christie's London will sell Fine Books and Manuscripts, in 459 lots.

- Also at Bonhams New York on 20 June, The Gentleman's Library, in 534 lots. Mostly non-book things, but the catalog makes for a fun browse.

- PBA Galleries sells Rare Books & Manuscripts, Fine Press and Illustrated Books on 21 June, in 354 lots. A 15th-century manuscript of Fasciculus temporum (the only known manuscript of this work in private hands) rates the top estimate, at $100,000-150,000. A first edition in English of Homer's works is estimated at $30,000-50,000.

- Swann Galleries will sell 19th & 20th Century Literature on 21 June, in 323 lots.

- On 22 June, Christie's New York sells Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts, in 295 lots. A copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle in German with contemporary coloring is estimated at $250,000-350,000. What the auction house is calling the largest Jefferson manuscript ever offered at auction, a small collection of documents relating to his suit against the Rivanna Company, could fetch $250,000-400,000. Also on 22 June, in a single-item sale, a copy of the first collection of the Acts of Congress, bound for Washington and with marginalia in his hand. It is estimated at $2-3 million.

- On 26 June, Bonhams Oxford sells Books, Maps, Manuscripts and Historical Photographs, in 784 lots, and at San Francisco the Serendipity Shelf Sale, in 631 lots.