Top right: one of 60 colour plates from a volume containing issues of The World of Fashion for 1832, which sold at £200; below right: one of 44 colour plates from four vols. of Le Beau Monde, 1806-08, that sold at £600. Also featured was a lot offering ten vols. of Art Gout Beauté from the years 1926-32 which sold at £540. Top lot in the Janet Hill collection, at £1700, was one that offered four volumes of the Journal des Dames et des Modes of 1912-14, containing 182 colour plates in all.
A Jacob’s Ladder transformation toy of the 1850s, comprising five interchangeable coloured litho sections, made £220 as part of the Ron Morris collection.
A top bid of £2200 was made for a late 18th or early 19th century toy titled A Panorama on the green paper covered box and containing a dozen coloured reverse image engravings, a green paper-covered, wooden hinged rectangular mirror and a 3cm diameter magnifying glass on a detachable turned wooden handle. The piece was catalogued as “an unusual toy in the manner of a zograscope, but obviously much earlier in date”. Sold at £1150 was The Visit of Santa Claus to Happy Children, a Myriopticon of the 1870s(?). Produced by Milton Bradley of Springfield, Massachusetts, it comprised a lithographed proscenium that reveals a rolling coloured panorama. The printed material from this collection included a copy of Edward Orme’s Essay on Transparent Prints and on Transparencies in General of 1807, rebound in half morocco, which sold at £1600. An undated Illustrated Catalogue of Magic, Optical and Dissolving View Lanterns reached £250 and a Wrench Illustrated Catalogue of Optical Lanterns and Accessories, again undated, made £320. A 19th century French music sheet, La Lanterne Magique, that features a vignette of a showman and his assistant folding back the curtains to allow children to see the peep-show, sold for £420.
Fashion and other optical illusions
Though the catalogue did contain a selection of antiquarian and collectable books of a general nature, the March 31 sale held by Hampton & Littlewood of Exeter was notable for two specialised collections – the Ron Morris collection of magic lanterns, optical toys and related books and ephemera, and the collection of costume and fashion books formed by the late Janet Hill.
