Sotheby's - New York

Books and Manuscripts from the Collection of Jay I. Kislak. Sold to Benefit the Kislak Family Foundation.

Jay I. Kislak (1922–2018) lived an extraordinary—and extraordinarily productive—life. He brought remarkable energy and passion to a wide array of endeavors—collecting, education, aviation, business, and philanthropy. Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, Jay joined the realty firm that his father founded in 1906. After graduating from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and serving as a Naval Aviator during World War II, Jay expanded the family’s business to Miami, where the Kislak Organization quickly became an integral part of South Florida’s business, civic, and cultural fabric.

A nascent collector when he moved to Miami in the early 1950s, the historical milieu of Florida inspired Jay’s greatest achievement as a collector: the more than 4,000 books, manuscripts, maps, and artifacts documenting the history and cultures of Florida, the Caribbean, and Mesoamerica that were given to the Library of Congress.

And while Jay’s collecting extended to Impressionist, Modern, and Contemporary art; to Prints, Photographs, and Important Design; to Folk Art and many other areas, it is as collector of Books and Manuscripts that he will be best and longest remembered. Even after his spectacular gift to the Library of Congress, Jay continued to collect books, still focused on exploration, but shifting his attention further north. We are delighted to offer in April a varied selection of works from Jay’s library, including a magnificent set of the Great and Small Voyages collected and published by the De Bry family; an octavo set of Audubon and Bachman’s Quadrupeds in the original parts; the 1566 second edition of Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, annotated by two early Copernican scholars; the Frank Streeter copy of J. F. W. De Barres’s Atlantic Neptune; William Bourne’s A Regiment for the Sea; Richard Eden’s The Arte of Navigation; and Daniel Giraud Elliot’s Monograph of the Felidae or Family of Cats.

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Sotheby's - New York
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