Seen here are two books bound in tan half pigskin by Zaehnsdorf and featuring vignettes of the Great Wall of China to their spines. Lying flat is a copy of Sven Hedin’s Jehol, City of Emperors of 1932, and perched on top of it, “another similar”, or Portrait of Chinese Lady, as it says on the spine. The author, Lady Hosie, was the wife of Sir Alexander (1853-1925), a diplomat and Chinese explorer who wrote several books himself. Together, the two books made £420 (McEwan).
Lavishly bound in red calf gilt by Rivière, an 1837 first bookform edition of Pickwick Papers was sold at £600 to a private buyer. Meanwhile, bound in full tan crushed morocco to a tooled and onlaid Oriental design by Gruel, and incorporating full morocco gilt doublures and watered silk endpapers, one of 50 Japon copies of Paul Louis Rivière’s Poh Deng – Scènes de la Vie Siamoise issued in 1913, was sold at £700, again to a collector. The latter, illustrated by H. de la Nazière, contained the plates in two states, one hand coloured.
Sold at £1300 to a private buyer was one of 145 copies on Japon Impérial of a 1927, Paris edition of Pushkin’s Boris Godunov, illustrated with chromos by Boris Zworykine (present in two states) and expensively bound by G. Levitzky in dark blue crushed morocco gilt with multi-colour inlaid morocco doublures and silk fly-leaves painted with watercolour scenes from Pushkin’s tale.
In contemporary bindings of green morocco gilt and damson calf respectively were two Walter Scott association volumes, an 1817 copy of L.T. Berguer’s Trifles in Verse inscribed by the author to Mrs Walter Scott, and an 1820 third edition of J. Roby’s Lorenzo, or a Tale of Redemption which, like the Berguer volume, bore the Abbotsford Library inscription and shelfmark. Together they made £1200 (Burmester).
Job lots with a difference
UK: GETTING on for 100 lots in the Phillips sale of February 16 comprised books from one private English collection that were characterised by smart and expensive bindings. Job lots were common but I have illustrated one lot that contained just two books, on a related theme and in matching bindings, and have picked out a few others that presented only one or two of the more valuable books each, but which were unfortunately not to be found among the composite illustrations used in the catalogue.
