Collectables

IT must be every trustee’s nightmare. You dispose of vanloads of unwanted books for what you think is a realistic £36,000, but then over a period of less than a year you see the pick of them then raise around £500,000 at auction.

Does Rowling have them rattled?

Despite riding the crest of a wave of popularity, Theodore Roosevelt declined to run again for the presidency in 1908. Instead he anointed William Howard Taft as his successor and famously embarked upon a year of big game hunting in Africa.

THE spotlight turned onto the vintage wine market last week after reports emerged concerning the sale of fake bottles. Media speculation has followed the launch of an FBI investigation into whether sellers knowingly sold counterfeit wines for up to $100,000 a bottle despite doubts about their authenticity.

On March 6, amid a scrum of journalists and anoraks, Bonhams sold the Angels collection of stage and screen costume including Obi Wan Kenobi’s hooded cloak from the original Star Wars film, knocked down below expectations at £45,000.

SIR Harry Newton (1871-1951), whose library provided some of the finest things in a £730,000 book sale held by Duke’s of Dorchester on March 8, was an adherent of the old ‘Cabinet’ school of collecting – buying key works of literature and science.

FOR the third successive year, dealers from the UK’s two major antiquarian bookselling organisations, ABA and PBFA have combined forces at the Edinburgh Book Fair which this year takes place on March 23 and 24 in Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms.

NEW YORK’s fairs scene is in some turmoil following a massive rent hike at the Seventh Regiment Armory on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the city’s chosen venue for art and antiques fairs.

ON Friday and Saturday, February 23 and 24, the Royal Bath and West Showground at Shepton Mallet will host the largest postcard, tradecard, postal history and ephemera fair in the UK.

HAVING not seen the light of day for around 40 years, this Bassett Lowke locomotive excited train enthusiasts when it came up for sale at Malcolm’s No 1 Auctions in Boston Spa, Wetherby, North Yorkshire.

Snowfall may be sparse across the Alps this season, but it didn’t stop the storm of buyers at the tenth annual ski poster sale at Christie’s South Kensington on January 18 from raising their paddles.

LONDON-based specialist book auctioneers Bloomsbury Auctions enjoyed a successful inaugural sale in Rome on December 6 where a total of €801,000 (£545,000) was realised.

Like needlework, letter writing and mastering the harpsichord, rolled paperwork or quillwork was deemed a suitable pursuit for a young lady of the 18th century.

Illustrated by Denver Gillen, Robert L. May’s poem about Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was first issued in 1939 as a give-away booklet for children by a Chicago department store, Montgomery Ward.

The Museum in Docklands have acquired a rare and significant archive of 18th century papers highlighting London’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.

JOHN Taylor was the Sawrey joiner and wheelwright, whose wife and stout, elderly daughter, Agnes Anne, kept the village shop immortalised by Beatrix Potter in Ginger and Pickles. But the first Taylor to appear in one of her books was his son, young John, who was the model for the terrier carpenter John Joiner in The Roly Poly Pudding.

MISSING Book Fairs, named after the fairs’ eponymous organiser, Chris Missing, are moving one of their six events from one stately home to another.

ON December 28, 1792 Anglo-Irish statesman, orator and philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-97) enacted the melodrama in Parliament that became known as the Dagger Scene.

A set of 38 individual original metal printing plates used for the illustrations for John Lennon’s first book, are to go under the hammer on December 2 at Dickins of Middle Claydon, Bucks.

A Stradivari violin, which has been played in concert halls all over the world, is being offered for sale by Corsham-based auctioneers Gardiner Houlgate in London on November 6.