Latest News Articles by Ian McKay
German wounds book makes the cut at auction
03 July 2017This rather unsettling woodcut illustration shown above, an almost surreal depiction of an amputation, is taken from from a 1515, Grüninger of Strasbourg edition of Hieronymous Brunschwig’s Das buch der wund Artzeny. Handwirkung der Cirurgia.
First mention of Poirot detected
03 July 2017Agatha Christie’s books were much in evidence at a Keys (17.5% buyer’s premium) sale of June 7-8, among them a 1921 first of The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
Simply the breast: deluxe Duchamp
03 July 2017Art books in a Ketterer Kunst (20% buyer’s premium) sale of May 22 included one of 15 deluxe copies of a 1950 edition of Harry Roskolenko’s Paris Poems, containing an original watercolour by Zau Wou-Ki and an extra suite of his lithographed illustrations. It sold at €42,000 (£36,240).
A lot that should jog the memory
03 July 2017One of the odder lots I have stumbled across in the many June book sales is a worn and soiled 12pp autograph catalogue, or calendar of “35 nude male races held on Kersal Moor [near Manchester] between 1777 and 1811”.
Maths textbook keeps up with the times
03 July 2017The “oldest mathematical textbook still in common use today”, according to Printing and the Mind of man, is that written around 300BC by the Greek mathematician, Euclid of Alexandria.
James Bond’s big number comes up in Carlisle auction as ‘Casino Royale’ first edition takes £22,500
29 June 2017The novel that introduced the world to James Bond, ‘Casino Royale’ of 1953, has long been a key target for collectors. Anyone who laid out 10/6d for a copy over 60 years ago and has kept good care of the book will have done themselves or their descendants proud.
The bumper book sales season
26 June 2017As in many previous years, the months of June and July signal the arrival of large numbers of important book, manuscript and related sales.
Small and simple miniature book... but big price at auction
26 June 2017An exceptionally rare miniature book, a 'Kalendarium Evangelia' printed by Christopher Plantin in Antwerp in 1570, measuring just 35mm high appeared at a recent Bonhams sale.
The surrender that led to Irish independence
26 June 2017“In order to prevent the further slaughter of Dublin citizens, and in the hope of saving the lives of our followers, now surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, the members of the Provisional Governments present at Head Quarters have agreed to an unconditional surrender…”
How sketches liven up plain sailing
26 June 2017For a number of years now ship’s logs have made good prices at auction. Those featuring naval engagements, significant encounters in foreign lands, or with added, if amateur illustration – even logs kept on whalers that use simple sketches to record a catch – offer something extra.
London auction call to arms
26 June 2017Showing some internal staining, browning and other soiling, this 1517 Lyon printing of one of the works of GB Castiglione, a humanist and sometime tutor to the future Elizabeth I, sports a contemporary English binding of blind-stamped calf.
Pioneering study of native Americans
26 June 2017Karl Bodmer, a Swiss artist, was engaged by Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied to provide a pictorial record of his 1833-34 travels among the Indians of the Upper Missouri regions of North America.
Hunting tales tracked down at auction
26 June 2017Some of the more successful lots in a June 1 sale at PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) of the first portion of the Richard Beagle collection of angling and sporting books were scarce accounts of early hunting trips in the Yukon and Wyoming.
Early tastes of a Victorian bibliophile
19 June 2017The library of William O’Brien, an Irish-born QC and High Court judge in the Victorian era, sold for a premium-inclusive £2.8m at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on June 7.
Initial ideas on printing the Bible
19 June 2017Featuring more than 70 decorative or historiated initials in full contemporary colour, a fine copy of a Biblia germanica printed by Gunther Zainer of Augsburg in 1475-76 sold for a record €120,000 (£103,450) in a Ketterer Kunst (20% buyer’s premium) sale.
Avicenna on metaphysics in 1495
19 June 2017Cleaned, restored and recently rebound in brown buckskin, together with a 1966 reprint, a rare 1495 Venetian first of Avicenna’s Metaphysica made €26,000 (£22,260) in a Reiss & Sohn (18% buyer’s premium) sale. The price was slightly under estimate but a record nonetheless.
First Fleet footsteps in the Australian continent
19 June 2017Written by Judge Advocate David Collins, secretary, close friend and adviser to Governor Arthur Phillip, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales of 1798-1802 was the last of the so-called ‘First Fleet’ journals to be published.
Jewelled Sangorski & Sutcliffe binding lifts copy of Byron poem to $60,000 at New York auction
16 June 2017Sumptuous jewelled bindings produced by London bookbinders Sangorski & Sutcliffe in the early years of the 20th century rarely emerge for sale nowadays.
Inscriptions provide vital 'Spark' in Edinburgh auction
12 June 2017Sensational results for Scottish author in Lyon & Turnbull sale recall a doomed family link...
‘Bruges Master’ produces something of the knight at German auction
12 June 2017“A masterpiece of Flemish book illumination,” said Reiss & Sohn (18% buyer’s premium) of a rare manuscript compendium of texts on chivalry, heraldry, nobility and the rules of war offered in its May 16-18 sales series.