Dominic Winter

Ornithological books and artworks have played their part in the success of two recent sales and a selection of just a few of those lots begins with books from the Ladwell library.

A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening… is the single volume that I have selected from a recent Gloucestershire auction in which job lots were very much in evidence and that acted as a sort of extra, clearing-the-decks sort of exercise in the saleroom’s calendar.

Late 18th-century works for children combine juvenile diversion with moral instruction.

Letters on the sails of the vessels seen on the title-page of Pedro de Syria’s Arte de la Verdadera Navegacion, published in Valencia in 1602, are a reminder that it was Columbus’ voyage in Spanish service just over a hundred years earlier that led to the ‘discovery’ of the Americas.

Drawn from sales held in the last days of January in the UK and US, an artistic device of framing a view with trees in the foreground is demonstrated in the two plates reproduced below.

Christmas has little, if any, effect on collectors of vintage and antique toys, but that doesn’t stop auctioneers mounting festive season specials.

Packed with a varied selection of precisely 1000 lots, a very thick catalogue rounded off one saleroom’s year in a December 11-12 sale.

Titled ‘In the District of Moka’, the hand-coloured litho plate shown here is one of 40 that make up a scarce folio of 1832, Thomas Bradshaw’s Views in Mauritius, or Isle of France…

Artist often overshadowed by husband William now comes into her own at auction.

As soon as the devastating power of machine guns in the First World War became clear, the British Army abandoned its earlier policy of attaching a section of just two guns to each infantry battalion or cavalry regiment.

Rude Rowlandson print is among the highlights of Gloucestershire auction.

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period October 4-11, 2018. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

It may seem hard to credit nowadays, but photographs of fairies at the bottom of the Cottingley (Yorkshire) garden of two young girls, produced in 1917 as a practical joke, were taken to be genuine by many people – most famously, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Catching the eye in a German auction was a fine example of the most beautiful of all piscatorial plate books.

Founder remembered as anniversary sale sheds light on evolution of the Narnia Chronicles

Real rarities and record breakers are among items that feature in this first of a couple of reviews of more literary lots from the wealth of summer sales. Here the focus is principally on works of the last 200 years or so – and includes such diverse characters as Hugh the Heron and the Invisible Man.

Sold for £2500 in a Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) sale of July 25 was an enormous archive of work produced in the 1950s and ‘60s by Leslie Starke (1905-74), a cartoonist once very popular in both the UK and US.