It was sold for £700, despite the disfigurement that had resulted from old Sellotape repairs.
Partially annotated with details of prices and buyers’ names, a copy Mr Phillips’ sale catalogue of The Valuable Library of Books of Fonthill Abbey... was foxed throughout and in a distressed and amateurishly repaired binding, but it brought a bid of £490. The 20,000 volumes promised by this catalogue were sold over ten days in 1823, and a further 12 days were needed to dispose of the furniture, china, pictures and other effects that were also part of the Phillips catalogue.
One of the ‘How to Paint’ natural history guides produced by the art teacher and natural history illustrator, George Brookshaw (best known for his Pomona Britannica), a somewhat spotted and foxed 1819, second edition of his Six Birds, Accurately Drawn and Coloured after Nature... made £600 in full contemporary morocco.
Art and antique reference books included one of 500, three-vol. sets of the Hows’ English and Scottish Silver Spoons... of 1952-57, which made £500, and a near complete run of the respected Oriental carpet journal Hali, from its inception in 1878 to 1990. The first issue was in poor condition and three others missing, but 51 copies, plus an index and Decorative Hali: A Buyers' Guide to the Best Decorative Carpets, made £1100 (Sims Reed).
Bound in contemporary half morocco, one of 175 signed copies on vélin d’Arches of a 1928 edition of Suetonius’ Les Douze Césars, containing full page illustrations and other text decorations by F.L. Schmied, was sold at £500.
Among the maps, a 1626 Speed Asia..., framed and glazed but seemingly in early colour, was sold for £1100.
Woolley & Wallis, Salisbury, March 21
Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent
Christmas 1666: the Plague Toll
UK: One of the least prepossessing lots, but obviously rare and among the more sought after of the day’s offerings, was a small handbill recording the plague tally and burial record for the Cambridge colleges from Christmas Day 1666 to New Year’s Day 1667.
