This year saw a strong presence of music dealers, with A. Rosenthal from Oxford, and Stuttgart’s Dr Ulrich Drüner, joining regular German exhibitors Hans Schneider and J. Voerster, who sold a first edition of Brahms’ Six Songs for a Single Voice, with a handwritten dedication from the composer to Clara Schumann, for €2200 (£1520). Top of the price range were the medieval illuminated manuscripts available for over €500,000 (£350,000) on the stands of Dr Jörn Günther (Hamburg) and Heribert Tenschert (Switzerland).
This year the organisers noted “significantly more collectors of books and graphic art, both private and institutional”.
Sun shines on Stuttgart…
FINE weather helped the 43rd Stuttgart Antiquarian Book Fair welcome around 6000 visitors, up 20 per cent up on 2003, to the city’s Württemberg Kunstverein from January 23-25. The fair, staged by the Verband Deutscher Antiquäre (German Antiquarian Bookdealers’ Association) since 1962, is the largest of its kind in Germany – the 96 exhibitors included dealers from Switzerland, Austria, France, Israel and the UK (Bernard Shapero from London).
