AntiquarianAuctions.com Auction #58 Highlights, April 13-20
AntiquarianAuctions.com is an online auction site dedicated to the sale of rare and out-of print books, maps & prints, documents, letters, ephemera and vintage photography. All pricing is done in US$. No buyer’s premium is charged.
Lot 1
Harris (C.J.H.) & Ingpen (Brian) Mailships of the Union-Castle Line
Published: Cape Town, 1994 Estimate: $1,750/2,000
A Special Edition Limited to 100 copies, this is copy number 1 and is presented to Fernwood Press, signed by the author and artist. With a painting in oils by Peter Bilas of the Kildonan Castle approaching Durban specially commissioned for this work and reproduced on page 44. The painted area measures 900 x 500 mm and is in an attractive gilded frame (1050 x740 mm).
Peter Bilas was born in Austria but has spent much of his life in South Africa. His interest in the sea and his consummate talent as a marine artist encouraged him to abandon a successful career in computers to concentrate on painting. He exhibits regularly and has won considerable acclaim at the renowned Mystic Gallery in the United States of America as well as elswhere. Among his best known works are four scences on large canvas, of the Battle of Trafalgar.
Lot 2
Berry (William) Africa divided according to the Extent of Its Principall Parts
Published: London, 1680
Estimate: $3,000/4,000
The very large and decorative title cartouche, copied from Jailot, includes a lion, an ostrich, an elephant, a crocodile as well as classical and native figures. William Berry changed the coat of arms to that of the Royal Arms and included a dedication to the then recently restored King Charles II. There is also a cartouche that includes five distance scales.
William Berry was a bookseller, geographer and engraver, who was active between about 1670 and 1703. His most enduring partnership was with map-maker Robert Morden and, together, they dealt in topographical works, prints, maps, charts and globes. In the title of the map, Berry added detail for his English audience.
Lot 3
Harris (Willaim Cornwallis) Portraits of the Game and Wild Animals of Southern Africa
Published: London, 1840
Estimate: $12,500/15,000
Published in five parts at £2. 2s. each part, on large (Columbier) paper, with tail-pieces, or at £1. 1s. each part of ordinary (Imperial) paper without tail- pieces. The book was finally published in volume form in 1843 at £10. 10s. (possibly in half morocco) and £5. 5s. respectively.
One of the most important and valuable of the large folio works on South African fauna. In addition to the beautiful coloured engravings (sic) which render this work almost the most highly prized of the books relating to South African animals, every plate is accompanied by an exhaustive chapter upon the characteristics of the animal represented, as well as by a short sketch of its personal appearance.
Lot 8
Skotnes (Pippa) Editor: Sound from the Thinking Strings: A Visual, Literary, Archaeological and Historical
Interpretation of the Final Years of /Xam LIFE
Published: Cape Town, 1991
Estimate: $4,000/5,000
Private edition with 3 original colour etchings and seventeen original black and white etchings by Pippa Skotnes, each signed and numbered by the artist, quarter black leather with paper-covered sides, uncut edges, contained in a matching leather and cloth slip case, a fine copy. Number 35 of 50 copies signed by all four contributors.
All the etchings were printed from the original copper plates, on Zerkall Buetten paper, by the artist with the assistance of Frith Langerman, Pascal Bompard and Christine Dixie.
‘Sound from the thinking strings’ is a visual, literary, archaeological and historical interpretation of the final years of |xam life. Published by Axeage Private Press and edited by Pippa Skotnes, it includes translations by Stephen Watson, essays by John Parkington and
Nigel Penn, original etchings by Pippa Skotnes and a foreword by Stephen Jay Gould. Sound from the thinking strings was the inaugural publication of Axeage Private Press and was launched with an exhibition at the Iziko South African Museum that included various related objects, manuscripts, photographs and the records of the Breakwater Prison. The edition is limited to 50 copies, some of which are included in the collections of the Iziko South African National Gallery, public libraries and several European and American collections, including Yale’s Centre for the Book and the Smithsonian’s African art collection. The book was widely reviewed and was the recipient of the University of Cape Town Book Award in 1992.
The publication was later also exhibited as part of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award and travelled with the exhibition to all the major centres of the country. It was also the subject of a major court case which was widely publicised in the press in which the National Library sued Pippa Skotnes for free copies of the book under the Legal Deposit Act, maintaining that a book could not be an artwork.
Lot 134
Cape Piscatorial Society, Piscator, Vol 1 no 1 March 1947 - vol1 XXXII no. 104 Summer 1979
Published: Cape Town, 1947 -1979
Estimate: $900 /1,100
In March 1947 the first issue of Piscator, the Society's journal appeared. A. C. Harrison was its editor and, in a tribute to AC in December 1977 when the 100th edition of Piscator was published, the then CPS President, the late Dr. Frank Bradlow, wrote: "There can be few people who have met "AC" whose lives have not been enriched; his direct courteous manner, his dry sense of humour, his encyclopaedic knowledge of nature and fishing, and his human and humane wisdom are but a few of the qualities which make those who know him realise they have been in the company of a very unusual individual; one of those rare human beings whose personality makes an indelible impression on one's memory
Lot 203
[Wenceslas (Hollar), Logan (David) Engravers] Origines Juridiciales, or Historical Memorials of English Laws Published: London, 1666
Estimate: $700/1,000
A large and internally fine copy of this scarce first edition: many copies were destroyed during the Great Fire of London, according to Pepys. He wrote "15 April 1667...bought Dugdale's History of the Inns of Court, of which there was but a few saved out of the fire...so away home... [17 April] ...to my chamber and there spent the night in reading my new book, Origines Juridicales, which pleases me" (Samuel Pepys, Diary, 15 and 17 April 1667).
The foremost early treatise devoted to the history of the legal profession (particularly to the Inns of Court) still of value, termed "a pioneering work . . and influential" by Dr. Baker and "the chief authority" by Holdsworth: Dugdale's landmark treatise provides a wealth of information about the sources of both English law and English legal institutions, including the Inns of Court for which it is a main authority.
Lot 208
Bauer (Elvira) Trau Keinem Fuchs Auf Grüner
Heid Und Keinem Jud Bei Seinem Eid
Published: Nurnberg, 1936
Estimate: $600/700
One of the most virulently anti-Semitic children's books ever published. This is the first of three anti-Semitic children’s books published by Julius Streicher’s Stürmer Publishing House. They are among the nastier productions of the Third Reich. Around 100,000 copies were printed, and the book was used in many schools. The author, Elvira Bauer, was an 18-year-old art student. The title comes from a phrase by Martin Luther, whose anti-Jewish remarks the Nazis were happy to use.
Written in Sutterlin the old German script developed in the 16th century. The Nizkor Project: Propaganda and Children during the Hitler Years by Mary Mills: The image of the Jew as something less than human, unnatural and immoral recurs throughout the Nazi propaganda picture storybooks for young children. Around the age of six, children were given primers, whose content focused upon camp life, marching, martial drums, boys growing up to be soldiers, etc. Even at this young age, it is obvious that as one principal of a German academic high school wrote: "Education in relation to weapons... is no special branch of general education; rather it is, in point of fact, the very core of our entire education." Along with these primers, children were given a supplement entitled Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud bei seinem Eid (Don't Trust A Fox in A Green Meadow Or the Word of A Jew).
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Next auction: Auction #58: 25 May - 1 June 2017
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