60 12th March 2011 antiquarian books


continued from page 59 natural history books


and offering 16 and 12 coloured plates respectively, they were originally intended to be combined and issued in parts, but though the first two parts did offer this combined approach, subsequent parts were issued separately. Among the more general collections


seen in recent months, the most expensive, at £100,000, was an album of 18th and 19th century watercolours in the Hesketh sale at Sotheby’s. The 79 watercolours featured the work


of a number of prominent natural history artists, among them J.W. Lewin, John Abbott and Sydenham Edwards. However, the most significant contributor with fine studies of flowers, fish and birds was the English soldier, naturalist and artist, John Davies (c.1739-1812), who when not engaged on his duties with the Royal Regiment of Artillery in North America and other parts of the world, put his spare time to good and creative use. The collection was assembled by John


Francillon, a London silversmith who was also an avid entomologist. The earliest general collection of recent


sales was a complete set of the Bologna published works of Ulisse Aldrovandi


British & Irish Book Auctions Mar 9*@


Mar 9*@ Mar 9*@ Mar 10@ Mar 10*@ Mar 10*


Mar 10*@


Mar 10-11*@ Mar 11-12*@ Mar 12@ Mar 12*@ Mar 12* Mar 12*


ends Mar 15* Mar 15


Mar 15* Mar 15* Mar 15* Mar 16*


Mar 17*@ Mar 17* Mar 17* Mar 18* Mar 22 Mar 22


Mar 22* Mar 24


Mar 24-25 Mar 26*@


Right: a sheet of brightly coloured fish by Thomas Davies, from an album of original


watercolours of the 18th and 19th centuries that made £100,000 as part of the Hesketh library.


(1522-1605), a man whom Linnaeus, Buffon and others considered the father of natural history studies and whose many works were in large part based on his own vast collections. Sold for $40,000 (£25,600) at


Christie’s New York on December 3, these 13 woodcut-illustrated volumes ranged in date from his three-vol. Ornithologiae of 1599-1603 to the Dendrologiae of 1667-68. Although a number of the 11 works in this group were posthumously published, all bar one were first editions. Bound in 19th century calf, the books bore a number of aristocratic bookplates. Much later and much more modestly


priced at £780 by Thomson Roddick & Laurie of Carlisle on December 16 was a full set of the Bewick natural histories issued as seven slim, 12mo volumes by the Apollo Press of Alnwick in 1809. Each was in original printed card wrappers with 32- 40 engraved plates per volume.


The first big entomological lot of the


year was seen at Hauff & Auvermann of Berlin on January 15, where a 1730, first Dutch and first folio edition of Maria Sibylla Merian’s De Europische Insecten took a record €41,000 (£34,530). The work is as remarkable for the botanical detail of the 184 plates (on 47 leaves) as for the insects, which are represented in different stages of their development, on and around flowers and foliage. This copy was fully coloured in a restored but period vellum binding. Looking back once more to the


10-lot Book Section, Boulton & Cooper - Malton (01653 696151) 27-lot Book Section, John Goodwin - Ledbury (01531 634648) 10-lot Book Section, Nesbits - Southsea (023 9229 5568)


Bibliophile Sale, Bloomsbury Auctions - Godalming (01483 423567) 40-lot Book Section, Stroud Auctions (01453 873800)


Book Section: Decorative Interiors Sale, Cheffins - Cambridge (01223 213343) 10-lot Book Section, Philip Serrell - Malvern (01684 892314) 51-lot Book Section, Hansons - Derby (01283 733988)


42-lot Book Section, Lacy Scott & Knight - Bury St Edmunds (01284 748624) 110-lot Angling Books Sale, Mullocks - Ludlow (01694 771771)


56-lot Book Section: Country Sports Sale, Netherhampton Salerooms (01722 342045) Book & Ephemera Section, Sheffield Railwayana Auctions (0114 274 5085) Book Section, Nigel Ward - Pontrilas (01981 240140)


Online Comics Sale, Comic Book Auctions www.compalcomics.com Book & Collectors Sale, David Lay - Penzance (01736 361414) Book section, Tamlyns - Bridgwater (01278 445251)


Books, Cards, Ephemera & Prints, Trafford Book Auctions - Manchester (0161 877 8818) Book Section, Frank Marshall - Knutsford (01565 653284)


Book Section: Coin & Medal Sale, Dix Noonan Webb - London (020 7016 1700)


Mar 17 Antiquarian & General Books, Ephemera, Thomson Roddick Medcalf - Carlisle (01228 528939) Mar 17*


120-lot Book Section, Bamfords - Derby (01332 210000) 22-lot Book Section, George Kidner - Lymington (01590 670070) Hunting Books Section, Shouler & Son - Melton Mowbray (01664 560181) Railway Books Section: Toy & Train Sale, Richardsons - Bourne (01778 422686) Book Section, Cotswold Auction Centre - Cirencester (01285 642420)


Antiquarian & General Books & Ephemera, John Nicholson - Fernhurst (01428 653727) Antiquarian Books, Map & MSS, Historical Photos, Bonhams - London (020 7468 8351) Book Section, Bonhams - Knowle (01564 776151)


Cookery, Natural History, etc, Bloomsbury Auctions (020 7495 9494) Antiquarian & General Books, Ephemera, Keys - Aylsham (01263 733195) Large Book Section, Churchgate Auctions - Leicester (0116 287 4856)


Sales marked with an * are those in which books and ephemera form part of a larger sale. Sales marked @ are viewable on antiquestradegazette.com. Auctioneers are asked to send details of specialist book sales, as well as those sales that may contain significant book and ephemera sections, to: Ian McKay Tel: (01795) 890475 • Fax: (01795) 890014 • ianmckay1@btinternet.com


Above: sold for £3400 as part of the Richard Harris collections at Bloomsbury Auctions on November 11 was a copy of Leach & Sowerby’s ...Descriptions of such British Species of the Linnean genus Cancer as have their eyes elevated on footstalks..., 1815-75. Incorporating Sowerby’s supplement with its seven new plates, it contained 54 coloured engraved plates in all – one of the five double-page plates shown here. Only an extra-illustrated copy, containing 11pp of additional original watercolours of crustacea, has made more at auction.


Hesketh sale, an attractive set of Engramelle’s Papillons d’Europe (1779-92) made £17,000. Bound as seven volumes in French red morocco gilt, it lacked the final selection of plates issued in 1793, but did contain 337 of the 353 coloured plates of a full run and the price was a record. In 2002 a copy containing only 130 plates did sell for £70,000 at Christie’s, but that copy was printed on vellum and in a sumptuous binding. At Reiss & Sohn at the end


of October, a fine copy of Bloch’s Ichthyologie in a richly gilt contemporary Viennese binding of brown morocco, the six large folio volumes containing 432


Above: one of 41 coloured engraved plates (including frontispiece) from a 1757 enlarged second edition of A.J. Dezallier d’Argenville’s ...Coquillages de Mer, de Riviere et de Terre in a handsome armorial binding of contemporary red morocco gilt that sold for £11,000 at Christie’s South Kensington on November 30. On November 22 last, Ketterer Kunst of Hamburg took a bid of €20,000 (£17,100) for a scarce complete set in modern but antique-style half calf bindings of one of the finer German shell studies. This was a first edition set of the 12 volumes of the Neues systematisches Conchylien- Cabinet of Friedrich Martini, which began publication in 1769 but following Martini’s death in 1778 was continued by Johannn Chemnitz and only finally completed in 1829. In 2002, the ex-Beriah Botfield/Longleat set sold for £22,000 at Christie’s, but that lacked the final and much- delayed last volume, running to only 408 plates. The Munich copy contained all 432 brightly coloured plates.


engraved plates of fish, all in period colour and partly heightened in silver, sold at €60,000 (£52,005). See also the Leach & Sowerby crab


collection and the shell books, illustrated and described on these pages.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96