Collectables

Forthcoming buying opportunities in the UK and around the world.

In the wake of more high-profile book thefts, the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers is tackling head-on the sometimes thorny issue of provenance.

ATG's pick of items sold recently at books and works on paper auctions.

A selection of highlights that dealers are taking to upcoming fairs.

In US collecting circles the ‘Anson-Ewing Burke Ale poster’ is spoken of in hushed tones. When an example was sold by New Jersey baseball memorabilia specialist Robert Edwards Auctions for $188,000 in 2008, it was described as the best-preserved of only three known. More recently in February another was sold for $96,000 at Heritage Auctions in Dallas.

This intricately detailed model of an English butcher’s shop, below, is part of a group of items consigned from the estate of a private collector to the June 15 auction of toys held by Pook & Pook in association with Noel Barrett.

MADAM – I believe I can shed some light on the story regarding the Gilbert Rae’s embossed tin sign (Letters, ATG Nos 2389 & 2391) – also pictured below.

Discoloured, stained and in a crudely restored old binding, a scarce hunting work of 1704 was sold for a much higher than expected £1400 at a recent Hansons (20% buyer’s premium) sale.

MADAM – I take great issue with the recent letter on Penny Farthings written by Peter W Card (ATG No 2391).

One of the more successful acts in a recent American magic and conjuring sale involved the appearance among the literary contributions of a doubly inscribed copy of Harry Kellar’s 'A Magician’s Tour' of 1886.

Billed as the first printed edition of the most authoritative medical text in the Islamic world, a 1593 copy of a work known in the English-speaking world as Avicenna’s ‘Canon of Medicine’ was part of a recent London sale.

Painted by Lt Gen Henry Hope Crealock (1831-91), this 6ft 8in (2m) wide pen and ink drawing is an eyewitness account of The Action of Bareilly – the battle of the last stronghold of Indian independence in 1858.

A sale of photographica and scientific instruments held at Reading’s Madejski Stadium included a rare work in the history of the microscope.

Nick McConnell of McConnell Fine Books is among the exhibitors at Firsts: London’s Rare Book Fair (see Books Supplement in this edition). He worked from shops in London before moving to the Kent coast, close to Canterbury.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from May 21-June 2, 2019.

Collections from two former British prime ministers – Sir Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher – sold out at auction in the same week.

Codes are there to be broken, as the Second World War British team at Bletchley Park proved by cracking the German Enigma machines.

Intricate representation labelled as a Royal Navy vessel has French prisoner-of-war origin.