A two-vol. English edition of 1818 in contemporary half calf, it sold at £700 to Quaritch.
• J.M. Tronson’s ...Voyage to Japan, Kamtschatka, Siberi... in HMS Barracuda, in the original blind-stamped cloth of 1859, but with new endpapers, made £700 (Corvus) and Captain B.W. Bax’s The Eastern Seas..., an 1875 account of the voyage of HMS Dwarf to China, Japan and Formosa, in original decorative cloth, made £570 (Shapero), while A Lady’s Visit to Manilla and Japan of 1863, by someone called Anna d’A, went to a Japanese buyer at £520.
• A presentation first (1874) of Theobald A.Purcell’s “Our Neighbourhood” or Sketches in the Suburbs of Yedo in original cloth (skilfully restored) was lotted with a later, 1899 edition to sell at £660 (Butcher).
•A Franco-Japanese item of the 1880s, an oblong octavo collection (in the original paper wrappers) of 47 uncoloured litho plates depicting all apects of life in Tokyo Prison, sold at £660 (Maggs).
One lot containing four locally published works by N. McLeod – a pictorial Ancient History of Japan (1859), an illustrated 1879 Album and Guidebook of Japan of 1879 and Korea and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel..., an 1879 work on Jews in the Far East, and one other, combined to sell for £1220 (Thoemmes).
• One of the better known works in the collection, G.A. Audsley’s two-vol. study of The Ornamental Arts of Japan of 1882, illustrated with numerous chromos and black and white heliogravures and bound in blue morocco gilt, sold at £1580 to Hartey, who also gave £660 for S. Bing’s Le Japon Artistique, Documents d’Art et d’Industrie of 1888, the 36 parts bound as three volumes. Christopher Dresser’s Japan. Its Architecture, Art and Art Manufactures, an 1882 first, made £520 (Maggs).
• A presentation copy of the illustrated Official Report of the Japan-British Exhibition... held at White City in 1910, was sold at £1400 (Hartey).
• Highlights of the remaining, Indian and Central Asian portions of the sale included an 1826 first of J.B. Fraser’s Travels and Adventures in the Persian provinces on the Southern Banks of the Caspian Sea..., in contemporary half calf, at £700, and an 1876, first English edition of Prejevalsky’s Mongolia..., the two vols. in red half morocco incorporating parts of the original cloth, at £1000. Both went to Goodes.
Dominic Winter, Swindon, June 20-21
Buyer’s Premium: 12.5 per cent
Japanese library has buyers wondering if they should have bid more
Illustrated right are three of the 215 lots that made up the collection formed by Bob Scoales, a member of the Japan Society sold at Dominic Winter, Swindon on June 20-21. • Though many of the books naturally refer to Japan’s earlier history, most were written in the wake of Perry’s US naval expedition of 1850-52 and the opening up of the country to foreigners, but one notable exception was a Narrative of My Captivity in Japan in the Years 1811-13 by Captain V.M. Golownin.
