A busy month for Dreweatts & Bloomsbury with 6 relevant sales
- by Thomas C. McKinney
Bloomsbury has six sales in March that will be archived into the Rare Book Transaction History
As winter gives way to spring, and the pace picks up for things in the northern hemisphere, so too does the auction game for works on paper. For Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions, no less than eighteen auctions are scheduled for the month of March. Of these, six are potentially relevant to you, readers of the Rare Book Monthly, and they include over 1800 lots all told.
For collectors of photography, March 5th and 6th see two separate sales on the docket. 19th and 20th Century Photographs from a Private Collection is the first auction and contains 213 lots. Photographs by William Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, Alfred Stieglitz, and Ansel Adams are only a small sample of the names available. The following day, March 6th, Photo Opportunities takes place with 245 lots for sale, 207 of which are contemporary photographs, and the other thirty-eight being books. This sale is focused on the 20th century and has modest estimates.
On March 12th, The Bibliophile Sale takes place and is the first of two book sales. Featuring 483 lots with estimates topping out at £3,000-4,000, the auction contains a wide variety of price-accessible material for collectors such as an illustrated copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Bells signed by the artist Edmund Dulac. (lot 190, est. £3,000-4,000) or Arts et Métiers Graphiques, a graphic design book on book design and production (lot 115, est. £1,500-2,000). One week later on March 19th, Continental, English & Middle Eastern Books and Manuscripts brings 169 lots to market featuring high profile items like lot 115, a first edition in English of the first complete translation of Euclid’s The Elements of Geometrie (est. £20,000-30,000), or lot 80, a large illuminated Ottaman Qur’ran from 1776 (est. £12,000-18,000).
Immediately following Continental, English & Middle Estern Books and Manuscripts, a sale of Autographs, Memorabilia and Vintage Posters is scheduled for March 20th. With 292 lots, the autographed material shines with examples from Charles Dickens (lot 35, est. £3,000-5,000), Paul McCartney and George Harrison of the Beatles (lot 47, est. £2,000-3,000), and Houdini (lot 227, est. £2,000-4,000) among the highlights.
Wrapping up the month for Dreweatts & Bloomsbury is their 445-lot sale Modern & Contemporary Prints on March 26th. A significant amount of famous and significant artists have their works included in the auction, including Lill Tschudi, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Marcel Dunchamps, David Hockney, and Banksy. This is a can’t miss sale for collectors of modern prints.
Details for all six sales are as follows:
19th and 20th Century Photographs from a Private Collection
Swann, May 15: Lot 4: Helena Bochoráková-Dittrichová, Z Mého Detství Drevoryty, Prague: Obzina, 1929. First trade edition, signed by the artist. $4,000 to $6,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 10: Nancy Cunard, Negro Anthology, with a tipped-in A.L.S. to Karl Marx's niece, 1934. First edition. $3,000 to $5,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 14: Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, 1845. First edition. $4,000 to $6,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 17: Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun, inscribed first edition, 1959. $2,000 to $3,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 28: Margaret Hill Morris, Private Journal Kept during a Portion of the Revolutionary War, for the Amusement of a Sister, 1836. First edition. $3,000 to $4,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 38: Anna Sewell, Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse, 1877. First edition. $3,000 to $5,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 43: Gertrude Stein, Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia, signed presentation copy with photograph of Stein, 1912. First edition. $8,000 to $12,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 48: Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, first edition in the scarce dust jacket, 1927. $6,000 to $8,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 54: Katherine Dunham, large archive of material from her attorney, 1951-53. $20,000 to $30,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 55: Margaret Fuller Signed Autograph Letter, New York City, 1846. $3,000 to $5,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 92: Sonia Delaunay, illus. & Tristan Tzara, Juste Present, deluxe edition with original gouache, 1961. $20,000 to $25,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 93: Flor Garduño, The Sonnets of Shakespeare, 2006. Limited edition. $6,000 to $8,000.
Ketterer Rare Books Auction May 26th
Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: Th. McKenney & J. Hall, History of the Indian tribes of North America, 1836-1844. Est: €50,000
Ketterer Rare Books, May 26:Biblia latina vulgata, manuscript on thin parchment, around 1250. Est: €70,000
Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: M. Beckmann, Fanferlieschen Schönefüßchen, 1924. Est: €10,000
Ketterer Rare Books Auction May 26th
Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: A. Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum, 1574. Est: €50,000
Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: M. S. Merian, Eurcarum ortus, alimentum et paradoxa metamorphosis, 1717-18. Est: €6,000
Ketterer Rare Books, May 26:PAN, 9 volumes, 1895-1900. Est: €12,000
Ketterer Rare Books Auction May 26th
Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: Breviarium Romanum, Latin manuscript, 1474. Est: €15,000
Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: Quran manuscript from the Saadian period, Maghreb, 16th century. Est: €10,000
Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: E. Hemingway, The old man and the sea, 1952. Presentation copy. Est: €3,000
Ketterer Rare Books Auction May 26th
Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: Flavius Vegetius Renatus, De re militari libri quatuor, 1553. Est: €3,000
Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: K. Marx, Das Kapital, 1867. Est: €30,000
Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: Brassaï, Transmutations, 1967. Est: €6,000
Sotheby's Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
Sotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USD
Sotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USD
Sotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USD
Sotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USD
Sotheby's Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
Sotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USD
Sotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBP
Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR
Gonnelli Auction 59 Antique prints, paintings and maps May 20th 2025
Gonnelli: Pietro Aquila, Psyche and Proserpina,1690. Starting price 140€
Gonnelli: Jacques Gamelin, Memento homo quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris, 1779. Starting price 300€
Gonnelli: Giorgio Ghisi, The final Judgement, 1680. Starting price 480€
Gonnelli Auction 59 Antique prints, paintings and maps May 20th 2025
Gonnelli Goya y Lucientes Francisco, Los Proverbios.1877. Starting price 1000 €
Gonnelli: Domenico Peruzzini, Long bearded old man, 1660. Starting price 2200€
Gonnelli: Enea Vico, Leda and the Swan,1542. Starting price 140€
Gonnelli Auction 59 Antique prints, paintings and maps May 20th 2025
Gonnelli: Andrea Del Sarto [school of], San Giovanni Battista, 1570. Starting price 25000€
Gonnelli: Carlo Maratta, Virgin Mary and Jesus, 1660. Starting Price 1200€
Gonnelli: Louis Brion de La Tour, Sphére de Copernic Sphere de Ptolemée / Le Systême de Ptolemée. Le Systême de Ticho-Brahe…, 1766. Starting price 180€
Gonnelli Auction 59 Antique prints, paintings and maps May 20th 2025
Gonnelli: Marc’Antonio Dal Re, Ville di Delizia o Siano Palaggi Camparecci nello Stato di Milano Divise in Sei Tomi Con espressevi le Piante…, Tomo Primo, 1726. Starting price 7000€
Gonnelli: Katsushika Hokusai, Bird on a branch, 1843. Starting price 100€