News

UK: THE Travel sale held by Sotheby’s on December 14 included a fine collection of what are known as ‘Lafreri-School’ maps, the product of a remarkable flowering of cartographic arts that took place in Rome and Venice, c.1540-70.

US: THE PIRACY collection mentioned above was not the only sale held by Christie’s East on December 12. Three important Hemingway lots which formed part of a general sale are described below, and in Antiques Trade Gazette No. 1472 I featured works by Ayn Rand, among them two works on Hollywood, published whilst she was still a young woman in Russia, which sold well.

Modern ceramics in keen demand by collectors and dealers UK: A HIGH turnover of £500-1000 lots in Lawrences' auction of Antique Furniture and Effects on December 5, 6 and 7 contributed more to the £255,000 sale total than any individual high-value entries on a day when, unusually at a provincial sale, the strongest prices came for ceramics – British, Oriental and European – rather than for the furniture entries.

UK: THE FIRST Tolkiens of 2001 combined to add £11,000 to the takings at this Bath sale.

UK: ONE CHART was very creased and there was a stain on the frontispiece that penetrated to the title page and early leaves, but the copy of Bligh’s Narrative of the Mutiny on [the...] Bounty offered in Carlisle was a tightly bound copy of the 1790 first edition in a contemporary binding of quarter calf and marbled boards, and it sold at £3150.

The Catalogue of Silver in the Grosvenor Museum, Chester by Peter Boughton, published by Phillimore & Co, Chichester. Available from the museum on 01244 402008 fax: 01244 347587 or bookshops. ISBN 186077153X £19.95 pb.

US: THOUGH he grew up on a Kansas farm, far from the sea, Charles E. Driscoll, who died in 1951, devoted much of his life to the study of piracy and as well as writing a great deal about his pet subject, assembled a marvellous library that was bequeathed to Wichita Public Library at his death. Last year the library decided to sell off the collection to raise funds for other acquisitions and on December 12, Christie’s East of New York sold the Driscoll Piracy library for $427,570 (£292,860).