Chopin Autograph Music, Limited Editions Club, Lewin's Birds: Auction Preview
A short musical presentation quotation in the hand of composer Frederic Chopin, offered at RR Auction this week.
Here's what I'll be keeping an eye on this week:
At New England Book Auctions on Tuesday, November 12, 217 lots of Angling, Hunting, Travel & Exploration, including a number of large lots.
Ending on Tuesday, the Bonhams Skinner sale of Fine Books and Manuscripts, in 126 lots. Expected to lead the way is a 1784 letter to the Sicilian envoy in Paris signed by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson; the auction house has not been able to locate another similar letter signed by all three. It is estimated at $750,000–1,000,000. An 1803 document acknowledging the ratification of the Louisiana Purchase is expected to sell for $100,000–200,000. An 1808 Timothy Pickering letter to Theophilus Parsons about the drafting of the Declaration of Independence could fetch $15,000–25,000. The sale also includes a number of ornithological illustrations from the collection of Robert Braun.
ALDE sells 155 lots of Livres de Photographies–Collection d'un amateur on Wednesday, November 13.
At Australian Book Auctions on Wednesday (check your local times), 65 lots of Historical Documents, Books, Maps &c., including a nice association copy of William Carron's Narrative of the Expedition ... (Sydney, 1849), which rates the top estimate at $10,000–20,000 AUD. A number of other key lots in this sale seem to have come from the same family collection.
Dominic Winter Auctioneers sell 463 lots of English & Continental Books & Bibles, Maps, Caricatures & Decorative Prints on Wednesday, including a 1541 edition of the Great English Bible ($7,000–10,000); a 1566 English New Testament rates the same estimate. A 1522 edition of Johannes de Ketham's Fasciculus Medicinae is expected to sell for £6,000–8,000, and a second edition of Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations could sell for £4,000–6,000.
At RR Auction on Wednesday, 701 lots of Fine Autographs and Artifacts, including a Tiffany & Co. silver plaque calendar marking the days of the Cuban Missile crisis, given by JFK to Army Chief of Staff Earle Wheeler. One of 34 such calendars JFK commissioned and presented, this example is expected to fetch above $20,000. It is a short musical quotation by Chopin which rates the top estimate, at $100,000+.
On Thursday, November 14, Freeman's | Hindman sells 346 lots of Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts, Including Americana, with Gould's Monograph of the Trochilidae, or Family of Humming-Birds (1849–1861) sharing the top estimate of $60,000–80,000 with a thick-paper copy of the first edition of The Federalist (1788). A complete run of Limited Editions Club publications from 1929 to 2010 (589 works) is expected to sell for $50,000–60,000. One of sixty copies of William Lewin's Birds of Great-Britain (1789–1794) illustrated with watercolors is estimated at $10,000–15,000.
