Antiques Trade Gazette 53
the British Isles
“After the ‘revolutionary dinner,’ crowds wrecked not just the tavern, but the meeting places, shops and houses of Dissenters”
landscaped gardens just outside the centre of Bath which, until recently, was the home of John Barrett, an eccentric schoolmaster and historian. The library was begun by his grandfather and, said the Bloomsbury cataloguer: “To walk into the magnificently gloomy library at Crowe was to enter an Edwardian time-capsule.” Published by Edward Wallis in 1820 or
thereabouts, The Isle of Wight
Circumnavigator...is one of the scarcer works relating to the island. A copy seen at Bloomsbury Auctions on May 27 sold at £4600, much higher than predicted. The work offers 19 coloured aquatint views on conjoined sheets that are folded concertina style. There was some soiling and browning to the plates, but it was still in the original floral-embossed cloth
binding, with gilt title and vignette to the upper cover and, although rebacked, preserved the original spine. A somewhat unusual theme
characterised an oblong quarto collection of eight etched and coloured plates after P.H. Wilson that sold for £1900 in the May 27 Bloomsbury sale. These were all Views of the Ruins of the Principal Houses destroyed during the Riots at Birmingham. It was in July 1791 that a ‘French Revolution’ dinner was held
commemorating the second anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. It was seen as provocative and disloyal to the established order and provided the spark for an explosion that had been threatening for some time, provoking a riotous – and quite probably orchestrated – response. Crowds wrecked not just the tavern in which the dinner was being held, but the meeting places, shops and houses of prominent Dissenters – notably that of the scientist and theological and political writer, Joseph Priestley. In fact, these disturbances are more familiarly known as the Priestley Riots. Each of the plates, dated 1792, is
accompanied by a leaf of descriptive text in English and French and the images in this copy were generally bright and clean in an old cloth binding that had the original, if soiled, creased wrappers bound in. The subjects include the house and ‘elaboratory’ of Dr Priestley. British topographical books from the library of the late Mike Walpole of Loughborough, sold as part of an earlier, May 6-7 Bloomsbury auction, were strong on Leicestershire and Rutland. Sold at £280 was a 1684, first edition of James Wright’s History and Antiquities of the County of Rutland, bound in 19th century red morocco with the ‘Additions’ and ‘Farther Additions’ of 1687 and 1714. But it was John Nichols’ similarly titled work on Rutland’s big neighbour, ...Leicester, that brought a bid of £3200. Bound as eight volumes in period russia gilt boards, since rebacked with morocco gilt spines, and illustrated with around 500 portraits, plates, maps and plans, this first edition set of 1795-1815 also came with its own mobile lectern-
BUYER’S PREMIUMS
Bloomsbury Auctions, London: 22% to £150,000, 10% thereafter Bonhams, New York: 22% to $100,000, then 20% to $500,000, 12% thereafter Sotheby’s London: 25% to £25,000, then 20% to £500,000, 12% thereafter Dominic Winter, Sth. Cerney: 17.5%
NB: premiums may not apply or have been set at different levels where prices from sales of previous years are quoted. Exchange rates are those in effect on the day of the sale
style cabinet. Bid to £1050 was a copy of John
Flower’s Views of Ancient Buildings in the Town and County of Leicester, published c.1830 with a lithographed pictorial title and 24 plates, all of them hand coloured. At Dominic Winter on May 7, a bid of £3100 was taken on Richard Davis’s detailed and very accurate New Map of the County of Oxford..., published by John Cary in 1797. Surveyed on a scale of two inches to the mile, Davis’s county map is regarded as a landmark in large-
continued on page 54
Above: one of the 30 coloured aquatints after Thomas Compton from an 1817 first of his North Cambrian Mountains, or a Tour through North Wales, that made £1600 at Bloomsbury Auctions on May 27. Some plates showed marginal foxing or soiling but, in rebacked half roan of the period, this was a first issue copy bound from the original ten parts. Rather more modestly priced at £340 in the same sale was a 1794 first of William Sotheby’s A Tour through parts of Wales..., which, as well as dwelling on the topographical features illustrated in 13 coloured aquatints, includes ‘...Sonnets, Odes and other Poems’. Some of the plates were rather browned and one was torn into the image, but it was in a contemporary morocco binding and bore a presentation inscription from the author to a Miss Stables as well as carrying the etched bookplate of David Lloyd George on the front pastedown.
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