Collectables

Golf books do not bring as many really high prices as was once the case, but the most recent of the regular sales in this category held by a Californian saleroom did contain a couple of surprises.

Two books from Herman Melville’s library, both volumes of classical poetry that were annotated throughout and in one instance signed, topped a recent New York sale.

A 1547 translation into Arabic of Euclid’s Elementa Geometrica sold for £17,000 as part of an October 23 sale of Islamic and Near Eastern works on paper at Bloomsbury Auctions (25/12% buyer’s premium) on October 22,

Focusing on south-east Asia, a 90-lot map section in an Essex sale comprised the extraordinarily successful first portion of a collection of maps and charts assembled by Christopher Beresford-Jones.

The old-fashioned country house sale hardly ever fails to cause excitement. The on-the-premises sale of contents from Athelhampton House, a Tudor manor house in Puddletown, Dorset, was no exception.

‘Highly unusual’ is how the Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) cataloguer described a Second World War medal group ahead of its sale in Dorchester on August 22 for £420, just over top estimate.

Venerable London rare book dealership Bernard Quaritch, established in 1847, has recently moved from Mayfair to Holborn. Here ATG talks to two members of the firm, Andrea Mazzocchi and Donovan Rees, about its new location and some wider trends in the book trade

Pictured below is one of the 26 views, after Coke Smyth, that form a first edition copy of John Frederick Lewis’ 'Illustrations of Constantinople, Made During a Residence in that City &c., in the Years 1835-6'.

Parsonage Museum ‘determined to make the most of second opportunity’ to own miniature manuscript

It was a visit to the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino with his parents that first whetted the 15-year-old Thomas Vroom’s appetite for perspective.

Just imagine: you have been through the horrors of the Battle of Waterloo in a regiment which suffered 217 casualties out of 396, and were wounded yourself, and then your career is ended by… a wheelbarrow.

As one of the most meticulously made pedal cars ever produced, the Austin J40 is always a target when it comes to auction.

American naval expertise and gallantry came as a big shock to the British, who had become used to the Royal Navy ruling the waves.

A white-metal regimental badge estimated at £50-100 sold for £4800 at Lindsay Burns (20% buyer’s premium) in Perth, Scotland, on September 3. Why? It probably hailed from the time and place of the American War of Independence (1775-83).

The great appeal of an otherwise typical early 19th century longcase offered for sale on September 12 by Malvern auctioneer Philip Serrell was its painted dial.

Estimated at £10,000-15,000 in a Forum Auctions sale of November 21 is a French indenture agreement of 1421 with a certain added English appeal.