Auctions

Filippo Bonanni’s Gabinetto Armonico of 1723 will be familiar to most lovers of old musical instruments in the form of a Dover reprint of the 1960s, but the engraved plate reproduced above is one of 152 from the Fort Augustus copy of the real thing, bound in contemporary mottled calf gilt, which sold at £3800 to Bruce Marshall.

UK: THE title page of a 1613, first complete edition of Galileo Galilei’s Istoria e Dimostrazioni..., containing his observations on the sunspots and his discoveries relating to the rotation of the sun – the first to contain Scheiner’s letters to Welser – which, bound in contemporary vellum, made £4500 (Quaritch) as an ex-Fort Augustus lot.

UK: Sotheby’s are hoping one of the most important watercolours by J.M.W. Turner to come to the rostrum will smash all previous auction records for the artist when it comes under the hammer in London on June 14.

UK: FRESH on the market, reasonably estimated and of undoubted quality – but three silver dessert baskets offered at Somerset still provided a surprise when, as has happened elsewhere, the ‘right’ piece of silver exceeds all expectations.

UK: TWO LIBRARIES that I fondly imagined we had seen the last of were represented in this recent South Kensington sale.

UK: IN A richly gilt and inlaid green morocco binding by Bayntun Rivière, a copy of the 1894 Kelmscott edition of Swinburne’s Atalanta in Calydon – an ex-Beeleigh Abbey lot with William Foyle’s red morocco bookplate – was sold at £1700 (Shapero).

UK: “I HAVE never understood why stools make so much money,” said one dealer after the seeing this late 19th century Chippendale-style pair, left, go under the hammer at Phillips Knowle sale. “They never seem to be used for anything but piling up newspapers in sitting rooms.”

UK: TWO more selections from the Ronald Segal library which was auctioned off in Sotheby’s English Literature & History sale held on December 19.

UK: POSTCARDS were responsible for the highs and lows of Bonhams' 512 lots of collectors’ items at Honiton. Two multiple postcard lots provided the highlights while the section also accounted for half of the 50 or so unsold entries.

UK: ARPAD PLESCH, born in 1890 in Budapest, was a member of an old Hungarian family who counted many doctors among their ranks. Arpad Plesch too became a doctor, though of law not medicine, but family traditions and his national heritage undoubtedly influenced him in the accomplishment for which he is best remembered in botanical and bibliographical circles – the assembly of a magnificent botanical library, the Stiftung fur Botanik of Vaduz in Liechtenstein.

UK: THIS 1564 Venetian edition of Dante’s Divina Commedia was the first to incorporate the commentaries of both Landino and Vellutello, which, printed in roman type, surround the italic setting of Dante’s text.

UK: THREE more selections from the Ronald Segal library which was auctioned off in Sotheby’s English Literature & History sale held on December 19.

UK: NEW and old technology were both part of a successful Saturday event for the Surrey auctioneers.

Ilkley rooms start the new year at the double UK: AGAINST a widely reported background of a slow start to the year, these West Yorkshire auctioneers got off to such a busy start that the first of their six annual one-day sales spilled over into a two-day event.

UK: BEARING 12 battle honours to unhappy, if topical, Afghanistan, this piece of splendidly confident Victorian headwear, led the way among the 570 lots of militaria on offer at Lewes based arms and armour specialists Wallis & Wallis (15 per cent buyer’s premium) on February 13.

UK: THREE more selections from the Ronald Segal library which was auctioned off in Sotheby’s English Literature & History sale held on December 19.

UK: COINCIDING with the recent recovery of Donald Campbell’s boat from Coniston Water, photographs and ephemera relating to Campbell’s famous father Sir Malcolm attracted extra interest at this Devon sale.

UK: THREE more selections from the Ronald Segal library which was auctioned off in Sotheby’s English Literature & History sale held on December 19.

UK: THE best-seller of Phillips’ 19th century sale came from the selection of sculpture in the shape of this 20in (52cm) high bronze of a crouching nude by the French sculptor Aimé Jules Dalou. Dalou, a fierce Republican, who spent a period of exile in England in the 1870s, is as well known for his terracottas as for his bronzes, both executed in highly naturalistic style.

UK: A POTENT combination of nostalgia and rarity lay behind the £12,000 paid for the poster pictured here in Christie’s South Kensington’s (17.5/10 per cent buyer’s premium) annual ski poster sale on February 22.