Rare Books &c. at Auction This Week
After quite a flurry of auctions last week, a quieter period this time round.
On Wednesday, June 27, Dorotheum in Vienna holds a sale of Books and Decorative Prints, in 497 lots. One major lot to keep an eye on in this one: a 1592 Plantin edition of Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, with a starting price of ??50,000.
Also on Wednesday, Libros Antiguos y Contemporáneos de la Colección de un Bibliófilo at Morton Subastas, in 260 lots. Rating the top estimate, $130,000-150,000, is Don Antonio Del Rio's Description of the Ruins of an Ancient City Discovered Near Palenque (1822). Athanasis Kircher's Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae (Rome, 1646) is estimated at $125,000-140,000. García de Orta's Aromatum, et Simplicium Aliquot Medicamentorum apud Indos Nascentium Historia (Antwerp, 1574) could fetch $60,000-80,000, while a Limited Editions Club copy of Octavio Paz's Sight and Touch is estimated at $50,000-60,000.
PBA Galleries sells Art & Illustration, with Asian & Asian-American Material on Thursday, June 28, in 364 lots. Sharing the highest estimate at $15,000-25,000 are Osvald Sirén's four-volume treatise Chinese Sculpture from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century (1925) and a sixteen-volume set of Toyo Bijutsu Taikwan ("The Collection of the Eastern Arts"), published in Tokyo in 1919 (pictured). Lots 263-321 comprise the Richard Harris Smith Collection of Asian-American Literature and Illustration, while lots 322-364 are being sold without reserve.
