Galileo’s First Book, Mao’s Notes on Poetry, Brookeriana Bindings: Auction Preview
Four stereoview images of Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession in Chicago, part of a group of seven offered at Freeman's | Hindman on July 2.
Here are the sales I'll be keeping an eye on over the next several weeks:
At New England Book Auctions on Tuesday, July 1, 223 lots of Fine Books & Ephemera.
Freeman's | Hindman sells 324 lots of American Historical Ephemera and Photography on Wednesday, July 2, including a group of seven stereoviews of Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession in Chicago ($1,500–2,500); a CDV photograph by Pauline Cushman by Mathew Brady ($800–1,200); and an 1845 letter about the "Anti-Rent War" in New York state ($700–1,000).
On Thursday, July 3, Forum Auctions sells Books from the Macclesfield Library, in 205 lots. The introductory note reports that this represents the final selection of books from Shirburn Castle. Lots include a 1663 Elzevir Bible in Dutch (£2,000–3,000) and Francesco Lana Terzi's aerostatics book Prodromo ouero saggio di alcune inuentiuoni nuoue (1670), estimated at £1,500–2,000.
At PBA Galleries on July 3, 54 lots of Elite Americana, Travel & Exploration, Natural History, and Cartography, with James G. Blaine's copy of the first octavo edition of Audubon's Birds of America expected to lead the way at $40,000–60,000. A copy of the proceedings of the First Continental Congress is estimated at $30,000–50,000; Pieter Schenk's volume of 100 engravings of city views (1702) is also expected to sell for $30,000–50,000. A July 23, 1762 Benjamin Franklin letter to printer William Strahan is estimated at $20,000–30,000.
On Tuesday, July 8, Freeman's | Hindman sells 86 lots of Western Manuscripts and Miniatures, with a fifteenth-century Italian manuscript of Petrarch's Canzoniere rating the top estimate at $20,000–30,000. The Ruskin Lombard Hours, a Latin manuscript book of hours on parchment from about 1450, could sell for $15,000–20,000. At the same estimate range are the Carafa Hours (about 1495), in the style of Attavante degli Attavanti; and a manuscript psalter, use of Sarum, from about 1430. This latter is in a seventeenth-century binding from the Vincent Williamson workshop.
At Christie's London on Wednesday, July 9, 132 lots of Valuable Books and Manuscripts, including the only copy in private hands of Galileo's first book, Dialogo ... in perpuosito de la stella nova (1605), which is estimated at £500,000–700,000. A copy of the 1469 editio princeps of Pliny's Historia naturalis could sell for £400,000–600,000, and the 1420 Gladstone Missal is estimated at £200,000–300,000.
On July 9 at RR Auction, Fine Autographs and Artifacts, in 785 lots. A June 5, 1786 George Washington letter to James Tilghman about the controversial execution of a British prisoner is expected to sell for more than $60,000, and a September 8, 1856 Abraham Lincoln letter to editor Charles H. Ray about the newly-formed Republican Party is estimated at more than $40,000.
Sotheby's London sells 161 lots of Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Mozart on Thursday, July 10, with some autograph notes by Mao Zedong about classical Chinese literature rating the top estimate at £400,000–600,000. A November 1, 1937 letter to Clement Atlee signed by Mao Zedong and Zhu De could sell for £300,000–500,000, and an eighth-century Northumbrian manuscript fragment containing two complete leaves from a sacramentary are estimated at £120,000–180,000.
On Friday, July 11, Sotheby's London sells Bibliotheca Brookeriana: A Renaissance Library Part VII, in 282 lots. Robert Estienne's Dictionarium (1543) bound by Niccolò Franzese for Giovanni Battista Grimaldi, is expected to lead the sale at £300,000–400,000; a copy of Johannes Magnus' Gothorum Sueonumque historia (1554) in a binding for Henri II's library at Fontainebleau could fetch £180,000–280,000. Many other remarkable early bindings to watch for in this sale, as well.
