The latter, housing an 1823 Life of Columbus, was a Cosway-style binding of green crushed morocco gilt by Holloway, the upper cover inset with a miniature portrait on ivory of the book’s subject, reached £1100. The postcard album, which covered a variety of subjects and sold at £1200, included 13 cards featuring Florence and Bertha Upton’s golliwoggs and seven Louis Wain cat cards.
Elsewhere, a good copy in original pictorial cloth gilt of Wright’s 1890 Illustrated Book of Poultry with its chromolitho plates sold at £580; an 1877 first of Edward Lear’s Laughable Lyrics: a Fourth Book of Nonsense Poems made £320, and John Flaxman’s 1795 Compositions from the Tragedies of Aeschylus, an oblong folio collection of 31 plates, including title, in detached original wrappers, sold at £360, despite some dampstaining.
Binding for Columbus
JUST two of the 600 or so lots that made up a March 2 sale of books and prints held by John Nicholson of Fernhurst, Surrey, managed four figure bids – a binding and a postcard album.