Five Rare Books for Collectors: Freize Masters 2024
The Camp no. 13/14 Almanac 1940-41
Highlights from Freize Masters 2024 which runs October 9 - 13 in The Regent's Park, London include:
* The Camp no. 13/14 Almanac 1940-41 [1940]
Inscribed by Kurt Schwitters and other contributors. The Camp Almanac 1940-41 is a special end-of-year double issue of The Camp newspaper, produced by detainees of Hutchinson Internment Camp on the Isle of Man, intended to showcase the work of émigré artists and writers detained there whilst also reflecting on the first six months of life at the camp. It includes contributions by several prominent artists, including Kurt Schwitters, who contributed a portrait of The Camp editor Michael Corvin. This copy belonged to Siegfried Oppenheimer, a German art dealer interned at Hutchinson.
* The Master of Santa Cecilia Antiphonary
An Antiphonary by the painter who worked closely with Giotto. With 10 historiated initials and and 15 ornamental initials, in bright colours and burnished gold. Manuscript in Latin on vellum, illuminated by the Master of Santa Cecilia. Italy, Florence, c. 1300-1305.
* A prayer book for Isabella d’Este
Manuscript in Latin on vellum, illuminated by brother artists Gherardo and Monte di Giovanni del Fora ((Gherardo likely produced the miniatures and Monte the decoration). Italy, Florence, c. 1490. This was created around the time Isabella married Francesco Gonzaga, possibly as a wedding gift from Lorenzo de’ Medici. It was probably acquired by Cardinal Richelieu in the 17th century and later owned by jeweler Louis Cartier (1875-1942).
* A book of hours
Made as a gift for Bianca Maria Sforza when she married the presumptive Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I. A precious gift for a future empress, from Ludovico Sforza to his niece upon her marriage. Manuscript in Latin on vellum, illuminated by the Master of Anna Sforza. Italy, Milan, 1493. Their marriage by proxy was celebrated with great pomp in Milan on the 30th of November 1493.
* 2,700 years of fictional cartography
Alongside a first edition of Daniel Defoe's Adventures of Robinson Crusoe with a map of the island by Clark and Pine, and a world map by Herman Moll, Daniel Crouch Rare Book’s presentation at Freize Masters will include:
- Dante’s infernal map of hell
- The first map of Atlantis, printed in Amsterdam in 1665
- A map of the fictional country of Poyais, by the confidence-trickster Gregor MacGregor, who convinced hundreds of people to invest in and settle there in 1822-23
- The first printed map of Oz, detailing every region from Munchkinland to the Emerald City
- F. Scott Fizgerald’s map of East Egg, West Egg, and the Valley of Ashes
