Collectables

A remarkable Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes collection which was consigned to auction by their daughter, Frieda Hughes, ran to some 100 lots and formed a separately catalogued part of a recent Knightsbridge sale.

Antiques Trade Gazette can confirm that Chiswick Auctions has proof of good title for a rare group of maps and charts, which the auction house sold last month.

The work of the MacMahon photographic studio of Aberdeen, this extraordinary carbon print was made in 1908 and depicts ‘Giant Cod Specimens…’ bought and cured by A&M Smith, a local fish processing and curing business.

One of just 100 copies of a scarce, privately published edition of poems called Salvo for Russia, produced in 1942 in aid of the ‘Comforts Fund for Women and Children of Russia’, was offered in a recent West Country sale.

Early recipe books can make for absorbing and, to modern readers, occasionally comic or puzzling reading, as demonstrated in three examples from recent sales.

Used to dramatic effect on the cover of the catalogue for a Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale, shown below is one of a collection of around 125 monochrome watercolour drawings of Irish lighthouses and the Irish coastline produced c.1860-67.

The central 350-lot section of the auction of clocks, watches and scientific instruments to be held by Skinner in Marlborough on April 20 comprises a single-owner collection of European tools.

Early maps and charts, previously owned by a Brazilian banker convicted of money laundering, surfaced for sale at Chiswick Auctions last week.

One says Scottish rather than Scotch except when one is referring to the spirit – or indeed, motor spirit as evident at the Edinburgh rooms of Thomson Roddick Scottish Auctions (17.5% buyer’s premium).

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from April 4-27, 2018.

With species extermination very much in the news following the death of the world’s last male northern white rhino, there was added poignancy to a cased and stuff bird offered at Summers Place Auctions (25% buyer’s premium).