Sold for £14,000 at Chiswick Auctions (15/12% buyer’s premium) in west London on June 30 was a rare first issue copy of Luigi Rossini’s Le Antichità Romane… of 1819-23.
A large oblong folio in worn but contemporary half vellum and marbled boards, it had some of the 101 plates now working loose, but this original issue of Rossini’s work appears to have only one other first issue presence in auction records of recent decades.
With only one other exception, all the copies listed in ABPC (American Book Prices Current) date from 1829 and this one set a new auction record for any copy of the work.
One of the watercolour views of India found in an album sold for £18,000 at Chiswick Auctions.
Bid to a considerably higher than expected £18,000 was album of around 140 original watercolours and drawings of Indian interest, among them topographical views, natural history subjects and figure studies – along with a prize certificate awarded to a Dr Colvin Smith and dated Madras 1869.
