Several Western booksellers will be setting up booths at the Fine Art Asia 2013 fair in Hong Kong this month. Art fairs have become a regular part of the mix for several antiquarian book sellers. Some are now making recurring trips to international art fairs in far off corners of the globe.
From October 4-7, Fine Art Asia will be making its 9th annual appearance in Hong Kong. Hong Kong has long been a place where East meets West, and that is more or less what this fair is about. It is filled with items from China and Asia, but then again, it is also filled with items from the West. Collectors, however, will mostly be from China. It is no great surprise that incomes are growing in China, and while the average income is still not enough to buy the level of art offered at this fair, there is a sizable segment of the population that long ago traded in their Mao suits for European fashions. Some will be from Hong Kong itself, but many visitors from the rest of China are also expected to attend.
Books have been merging with art for quite a long time now, though not on the level that they became features at an art fair until more recently. Books as art is nothing new, but their presentation to an audience beyond this particular niche of book collector is a more recent development. It is a logical move for forward-thinking booksellers who recognize the need to expand their audience when sales are not as easy to make to traditional markets as once they were.
We are also seeing more blending of history with art, something that fits well with booksellers who feature antiquarian works. Some of the artwork offered at this fair is more noted for its historic significance. Chinese bronzes may be beautiful objects of art, but they also will be highly collectible because their antiquity, and the history they represent, melds with their artistic qualities to make them very desirable. The same can be said for books. Their age and significance become a part of what makes them appealing as works of art.
For example, Shapero Rare Books will be displaying Novus Atlas Sinensis a Martino Martinio, a 1655 atlas based on the cartographic work of the Jesuit Martino Martini. Martini entered China in 1643 and traveled widely through the country. This is the first European atlas of China, and it was published by the great Amsterdam mapmakers the Blaeu family. Their atlases were both works of artistic beauty as well as a source of the latest information about the outside world for Europeans living in those distant times.
Another book Shapero will have on display is Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique, et physique de l’empire de la Chine, by Jean Baptiste du Halde. Du Halde was another Jesuit, a Parisian who collected the published and unpublished letters of Jesuits from China, including the aforementioned Martini, and published them in 1735. It provided Europeans with much insight into China. Shapero notes, “Historically the work is regarded as monumental from a textual point of view because of the vast amount and variety of interesting details on Chinese political institutions, education, language, medicine, science, customs, and artifacts.” This is another example of a book that is both beautiful and important for its textual content.
Other booksellers going to Fine Art Asia include the London bookseller Maggs Bros., a firm as old as many of the books they sell. Maggs has been one of England and the world's most important antiquarian booksellers for a century and a half. Also coming from London is the much newer dealer Daniel Crouch Rare Books. Crouch specializes in one of the most artistic areas in the works on paper field – maps, atlases, sea charts and voyages. With a shorter trip to Hong Kong is the fine Australian bookseller Hordern House. Many of the voyages that came to Asia also visited Australia. Hordern House is noted for offering material related to many early voyages, those of James Cook and others.
Last year, almost 25,000 people attended Fine Art Asia with sales of over US $50 million. This year's event has been timed to coincide with a series of art auctions being conducted by Sotheby's in Hong Kong.
Dominic Winter Auctioneers Printed Books, Maps & Wisdens, English Bibles 1500-1800 22nd July 2026
Dominic Winter, July 22: Lot 83 – Westall & Owen. Picturesque Tour of the River Thames, 1st edition, 1828. £2,000-3,000.
Dominic Winter, July 22: Lot 88 – Blume. Rumphia, Botanicae de plantis Indiae Orientalis, 1835-1848. £2,000-3,000.
Dominic Winter, July 22: Lot 101 – Michaux. Histoire des arbres forestiers de l'Amérique septentrionale, 1810-1812. £700-1,000.
Dominic Winter Auctioneers Printed Books, Maps & Wisdens, English Bibles 1500-1800 22nd July 2026
Dominic Winter, July 22: Lot 102 – Miller & Shaw. Cimelia Physica, 1796 [but c. 1816]. £3,000-5,000.
Dominic Winter, July 22: Lot 104 – Parkinson. Theatrum Botanicum: The Theater of Plants, London: Thomas Cotes, 1640. £800-1,200.
Dominic Winter, July 22: Lot 159 – Plancius. Orbis Terrarum..., double hemisphere map, 1594-99. £5,000-8,000.
Dominic Winter Auctioneers Printed Books, Maps & Wisdens, English Bibles 1500-1800 22nd July 2026
Dominic Winter, July 22: Lot 217 – Illuminated Medieval Manuscript. From a Breviary, 14th/15th c. £3,000-4,000.
Dominic Winter, July 22: Lot 224 – The newe Testament … By Wylliam Tyndall…, 1549. £3,000-5,000.
Dominic Winter, July 22: Lot 238 – Douay-Rheims Bible. 3 volumes, 1582/1609/1610. £7,000-10,000.
Dominic Winter Auctioneers Printed Books, Maps & Wisdens, English Bibles 1500-1800 22nd July 2026
Dominic Winter, July 22: Lot 336 – Ashendene Press. A Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle, 1903. £1,000-1,500.
Dominic Winter, July 22: Lot 393 – Sassoon. Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, signed limited edition, 1931. £800-1,200.
Dominic Winter, July 22: Lot 402 – Dylan Thomas. Twenty-Five Poems, 1st edition in d.j., 1936. £400-600.
Forum Auctions The 10th Anniversary Sale Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper July 16, 2026
Forum, July 16: Inundation papyrus. P.Michael 4, the ‘Inundation papyrus’, a geographical account of the Nile near Canopus, in Greek, remains of two columns from a manuscript scroll on papyrus, Egypt, second century CE. £12,000-18,000
Forum, July 16: Book of Hours, use of Sarum, manuscript on vellum, 6 full-page miniatures, with famous Middle English inscriptions, Southern Netherlands for the English market, [c.1430]. £30,000-50,000
Forum, July 16: Qu'ran, Arabic manuscript on burnished, stencilled, and gold-flecked paper, 447ff., Sultanate Gujarat, Ahmadabad, [after 1411 but no later than 1442]. £15,000-20,000
Forum Auctions The 10th Anniversary Sale Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper July 16, 2026
Forum, July 16: Turner (William). A New boke of the natures and properties of all wines that are commonly vsed here in England, rare first edition of the first English book on wine, By William Seres, 1568. £20,000-£30,000
Forum, July 16: Spenser (Edmund). The Faerie Queene. first edition, Printed [by John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, 1590. £30,000-40,000
Forum, July 16: Shakespeare (William). The Comedie of Errors, extracted from the first folio, Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, 1623. £15,000-20,000
Forum Auctions The 10th Anniversary Sale Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper July 16, 2026
Forum, July 16: Fleming (Ian). Casino Royale, first edition, signed presentation inscription from the author, 1953. £40,000-60,000
Forum, July 16: d'Agoty (Jacques-Fabien Gautier). Anatomie de la Tête, first edition, Paris, chez le Sieur Gautier, 1748. £10,000-15,000
Forum, July 16: Martial Arts.- Lee (Bruce). 'Praying Mantis style' Kung Fu book, containing numerous annotations, diagrams and graphs in Bruce Lee's hand, c. 1960. £50,000-70,000
Forum Auctions The 10th Anniversary Sale Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper July 16, 2026
Forum, July 16: Warre (Capt. Henry James). Sketches in North America and the Oregon Territory, first edition, rare hand-coloured issue, 1848. £30,000-40,000
Forum, July 16: Norie (John William). The Marine Atlas, or Seaman's Complete Pilot for all the principal places in the known world..., 1826. £30,000-50,000
Forum, July 16: Mao Tse-tung.- Kim Il-sung.-[Note book for visitors from China to Korea], signed by Mao and Kim, [Beijing, 1954]. £10,000-15,000
Case Auctions 2026 Summer Auction August 1st and 2nd
Case Antiques, Aug. 1: Timberlake, Henry: A DRAUGHT OF THE CHEROKEE COUNTRY on the West Side of the Twenty Four Mountains, Commonly Called "Over the Hills". $18,000 to $22,000.
Case Antiques, Aug. 1: Manuscript orderly book detailing day to day activities of multiple Virginia regiments in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary,1776-1777. $7,000 to $8,000.
Case Antiques, Aug. 1: Cormac McCarthy, The Orchard Keeper, Random House, New York, 1965. Signed 1st Edition. $3,800 to $4,200.
Case Auctions 2026 Summer Auction August 1st and 2nd
Case Antiques, Aug. 1: Battle of Kings Mountain Pamphlet by Isaac Shelby, April 1823, Signed. $1,800 to $2,200.
Case Antiques, Aug. 1: Large Tintype CSA Lt. Col. Thomas Coke Johnson, 19th GA, w/ Southern Cross, Book. $1,400 to $1,800.
Case Antiques, Aug. 1: Rare Civil War Ambrotype, 19th GA Infantry with Johnson Family of GA. $800 to $1,200.
Case Auctions 2026 Summer Auction August 1st and 2nd
Case Antiques, Aug. 1: A signed note written by Thomas Alva Edison to an unknown recipient, in which he shares his thoughts on Guglielmo Marconi, regarded as the inventor of the radio. $800 to $1,200.
Case Antiques, Aug. 1: Rare 1931 TN Grasslands Steeplechase Book, Gallatin. $800 to $1,000.
Case Antiques, Aug. 1: War of 1812 related Broadside, Petersburg Volunteers. $700 to $800.
Case Antiques, Aug. 1: 2 World War I Posters, “Our Colored Fighters” and “No Slacker”. $800 to $1,000.
