Six lots relating to Shackleton’s British Antarctic Expedition of 1907-09 offered in a January 3 sale held by Golding Young & Mawer included this ‘Midwinter Celebration’ menu from June 1908 that topped the bidding at £6400.
As expected, it was a menu produced for a ‘Midwinter Celebration’ in June 1908 that topped the bidding at £6400. Printed on the expedition’s Albion press, still in its pink card wrappers and with a woodcut vignette at its head, it promises what seems a somewhat fanciful bill of fare and ends with a rather tipsy final line.
This group of lots had as their provenance one William Roberts, a cook and assistant zoologist on the expedition about whom little is known, but a man for whom Cape Roberts was later named.
See preview in News Digest, ATG No 2372, for more details.
