No. 143 June 2006
News & Notes
The Royal Pick
by John King
This is the start of a new regular column for Amphora in which I will attempt to bring to light some interesting and amusing items that have appeared over the past few months in international auction and booksellers’ catalogues. I will write about rare books, not-so-rare books, illuminated books, manuscripts, and occasionally autographic material. In the course of a year, I receive approximately 200 printed catalogues, ranging from the sumptuous catalogues of Librairie Sourget, possibly the most elaborate and costly catalogues produced in the last 100 years, to the typed lists of books that other booksellers send out. The range of pricing between the two extremes can be as much as half a million dollars, so I do have a fair amount of material to work with.
Recently Librairie Sourget of Chartres, France, in Catalogue 30, had so many fine and wonderful items that I found it hard to pick just a couple, but this had to be a favourite at €175,000: Speculum Humanae Salvationis Latino-Germanicum, published by G. Zainer at the monastery of S. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg, 1472. This is one of the most important books in the history of the art of illustration, the first book printed at this monastery and the first illustrated book printed in Augsburg. It contains 192 wood engravings and has been beautifully bound in brown morocco. From the wonderful library of Estelle Doheny, it is the first complete copy to come on the world market in 30years.
Also in this catalogue is Apocalypsis Cum Figuris, by Albrecht Dürer, Nuremberg, 1511, which contains the most important 16 wood engravings ever produced by Dürer, including his Apocalypse engraving, bound in 19th century brown morocco, at €95,000. Also a first-edition Sidereus Nuncius, by Galileo Galilei, printed by T. Baglione, Venice, in 1610. Bound in full vellum in the 18th century, this small, thin pamphlet of 28 leaves is the foundation of modern astronomy and contains the first description of the use of a telescope by Galileo. The book is extremely rare, even though it was published in an edition of 550 copies, and has never before been on the open market—price on demand! And one last example from this fabulous catalogue: John Boydell’s collection of prints from the pictures painted for the Purpose of Illustrating the Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, John and Joshua Boydell, London, (1790)–1803. This volume, in a special binding of lemon morocco for the Duchess de Berry, contains 96 copperplate engravings that almost leap off the paper they are so powerful; all this a steal at €75,000. I’m very fortunate as I have about 60 of these engravings, all loosely matted.
Maggs Bros., 50 Berkeley Square, London, Catalogue 1384 has a great collection of privatepress material, with much from the Ashendene Press, Doves Press, Golden Cockerel, Gregynog, Gwasg Gregynog and the Kelmscott Press, to name a few. How about A Descriptive Catalogue of the Books Printed at the Ashendene Press, 1895–1935, with a foreword by C.H. St. J. Hornby, one of 390 numbered copies in the original maroon polished calf? This was the last book from this famous press; priced at £1,750. From the Doves Press we have Credo (£4,000), a folio leaf printed on handmade watermarked paper, 1906. The rarest of all Doves Press items, this item states Cobden-Sanderson’s deeply held spiritual beliefs and is the manifesto that lay behind all his work. Or how about a signed photographic portrait of Cobden-Sanderson in his smock and white beret, at £900? From the Golden Cockerel Press, Ecclesiastes or the Preacher, with 13 wood engravings by Blair Hughes-Stanton, in the original vellum-backed orange cloth gilt, published in 1934, at £650. From the Kelmscott Press there is a beautiful copy of The Well at the World’s End, by William Morris in 1896, bound in the original limp vellum, at £4,500. For the more ephemeral, a signed original carved woodblock by Eric Gill from The Prioress’s Tale, at £4,000. Also some wonderful 20th-century graphic art: Cigar Packaging, Germany, ca. 1930s, containing 180 pieces of original advertising and packaging art, at £1,000.
In future columns, I intended to peruse more catalogues than the two featured here, but found such wonderful items to mention that I have already run out of space for this issue!
John King is a bookseller based in Surrey, B.C.