The news in the book world is that buyers are back.
Serious book collectors came out in droves for the 50th anniversary edition of the New York Antiquarian Book Fair April 8‱1, proving that the event was as good as gold. Some 200 rare book dealers filled the Park Avenue Armory with a treasure trove of first editions and rare books, wonderful maps, illustrations, incunabula and more.
Presented by Sanford L. Smith & Associates, the show is sanctioned by the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, and exhibitors must be members of the league or the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America.
With this show, it is not the gate but what goes on inside the booths that counts. Nonetheless, a good-sized line had formed inside and outside the massive wooden doors to the armory on April 8 for the preview, with many more buyers coming throughout the weekend, as the show continued until Sunday afternoon.
“During the show almost every exhibitor said to me, ‘The customers are back. They are buying cautiously, but they are buying,'” Smith said, noting that museums and libraries as well as private collectors were shopping the show.
The event has become a quasi book convention and, for many of the international dealers, the one time a year to see each other, said the promoter.
“The show turned out very well&nd there were some very big sales,” he added. Without mentioning names, Smith said he knew of at least two dealers that had sales in excess of $500,000, with one item fetching $450,000 alone. Another dealer, who placed an ad with Smith, was pleased to sell seven key items.
The offerings at the show were diverse, from books and manuscripts to autograph letters and more. Subjects covered ranged from religion and travel to science and natural history and everything in between. An archive of autographed manuscripts on God by Sir Isaac Newton, circa 1700, who spent a lifetime studying theology, was available at Estates of the Mind, Great Neck, N.Y., while Libreria Antiquaria Mediolanum, Milan, Italy, offered Saverio Manetti’s Storia naturale degli uccelli trattata con metodo e adornata di figure intagliate&† , among the most beautifully illustrated Eighteenth Century bird books.
Sokol Books Ltd, London, offered a rare and sumptuous set of Book of Hours (Germain Hardouin, circa 1532) in English morello velvet with provenance to the Carnaby family. The book is rare for its deluxe presentation on vellum as well as it containing 14 illuminated miniatures that were painted on, not merely colored.
Early manuscripts are also a specialty here and a standout was an illuminated manuscript on vellum of Histoire Ancienne Jusqu’a Cesar , published in Brittany, France, 1474. The dealer, who specializes in pre-1640 English books and manuscripts, also offered a Latin manuscript on vellum by Haymo (of Auxerre) titled Expositio in espistolas Pauli&† dated 1481 and in an attractive late Eighteenth Century red morocco binding. The Bude-Barrois-Ashburnham-Foyle-Kraus copy retained Bude’s ex-libris dating and his arms on the first page.
Dealer Stephen Raab of The Raab Collection, Philadelphia, concentrated on ephemeral Americana in his booth, highlighting a photograph showing the signing of the treaty ending the Spanish-American War that was taken August 12, 1898. The dealer is known for historical letters, documents and manuscripts.
Raab also offered the only known letter by Theodore Roosevelt to his son Quentin while he was stationed at Yellowstone and written on park service stationary. Raab recently acquired the April 1903 letter. He showed an Andrew Jackson letter from 1804 that talks about the ceding of 22 million acres in the Southeast from the Indians to the government.
The caveat about judging books by their covers proved especially true with a diminutive and unassuming book in the booth of Frederik Muller Rare Books that was the rare Maximilianus Transylvanus: de Moluccis Insulis (Cologne, January 1523). The book is the first reporting of Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe. The Bergum, Holland, dealers also showed a Wang Qi Chinese atlas from 1660.
Lux Mentis Booksellers, Portland, Maine, featured a four-volume set of Hypolite Lecomte’s Costumes Civils et Militaires de la Monarchie Francaise de 1200 á 1800 , a first edition of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick in a full leather custom-bound art case that belonged to the binder’s grandfather and an important World War II naval sketch collection by American artist Charles Geer (USS Nicolas ).
Buddenbrooks, Boston, showed a rare presentation copy in presentation bindings, red morocco gilt leather, of a first edition copy of In Darkest Africa that was Henry M. Stanley’s pièce de resistance on African travel. The dealers also offered a rare Buddhist handwritten manuscript from Burma, Pauga Nipat Anguttor Atthagatha , 1683, that was sublime for its gold leaf and red and black lacquer.
Reinhold Berg Antiquariat, Regensburg, Germany, offered Albrecht Dürer’s well-known treatise on military architecture, Some lessons in the fortification of castles and towns, illustrated with a large title woodcut verso and with a dedication to Hungary’s King Ferdinand, printed Nuremberg, 1527.
Another standout was a rare world atlas by Abraham Ortelius, printed in Antwerp, 1612. The three-part, single volume includes a full-page engraved portrait of Pope Clement on verso and is the final and most complete Italian edition of Theatrum Orbis Terrarum . While the first printing in 1570 had 53 double-page engraved maps, this posthumous edition has more than 160 double-page engraved maps. Besides having all of Ortelius’ original maps, this edition also has a complete set of the very ornate maps created by Johann Baptist Vrients from 1602 and 1608. The dealers have been in the trade for three decades and have done this show for the last 15 years.
Ursus Books, New York City, featured a splendid first edition of Francisco Jose de Goya Y Lucientes’ Los Desastres de la Guerra, bound in eight folders of ten impressions each and preserved in a Nineteenth Century linen box, 1863, that brutally detail Spain’s War of Independence against Napoleon and his army.
A colorful standout in the dealers’ booth was Joan Miro’s À Toute Épreuve (Geneva, 1958), illustrated with 79 woodcuts, printed in color and presented in its original slipcase in a cloth folding box along with an original woodblock.
The Netherlands was well represented at this show with several dealers from that country making the jaunt to New York for the show. Among them was Antiquariaat Forum B.V., which showed Emblemata Sacra , a very rare printing of the Bible of the “Second House of Love.” This Plantin-print Bible is lavishly illustrated with 99 full-page engraved plates and hand colored.
Libreria Antiquaria Lucia Panini, Modena, Italy, offered a Fifteenth Century Flemish illustrated manuscript, Les Tres Riches Heures Du Duc de Berry , a limited edition of 350 numbered copies.
From Paris, Librairie Benoit Forgeot displayed a fine selection of 55 books, manuscripts and drawings, led by a first edition of Guillaume Apollinaire’s L’enchanteur pourrissant that contains 32 woodcuts by Andre Derain, signed by both the author/poet and the painter. The book was the first that Derain illustrated as well as Apollinaire’s first and is one of the 25 first copies on Japan paper.
Another piece of eye candy here was the visually stunning copy of Goethe’s Faust , which boasted one-of-a-kind morocco binding by the talented Charles Meunier with “cuirs incises,” done in 1905. One cover featured incised leather skeletons under an owl and on the other, colored leather inlays of flowers, skulls and owls.
You need not have been a king or a prince to buy the sumptuously colored atlas that was perhaps created for a royal but was shown to the public here at Antiquariat Inlibris, Gilhofer Nfg. GmbH, Vienna, Austria. Gerald de Jode’s rare Sixteenth Century atlas, Speculum orbis terrae , was printed in Antwerp in 1593 and includes 108 color maps. It is the only known copy in “Fuerstenkolorit” (Princes’ Color), the sumptuous coloring usually reserved for high nobility.
Bauman Rare Books did not have to travel far to get to the show from its Madison Avenue location. Its offerings ranged from classic fiction from Emily Bronte, Sartre and Ayn Rand to travel books and more.
Standouts here included Hartmann Schedel’s Das Buch der Cronike , July 1493, which is one of the most lavishly illustrated books of the Fifteenth Century. This first German edition includes the first modern map of Europe and Ptolemy’s map of the world and is noted for its 1809 woodcuts, some designed by Albrecht Dürer. A first edition of Tolkien’s The Hobbit , 1937, London, one of 1,500 copies, was another eye-grabber.
Nearly running the gamut from A to Z, rare copies of children’s books were plentiful at Aleph-Bet Books, Pound Ridge, N.Y., which showed a fondness for L. Frank Baum, offering several of his works. The standouts were a copy of his first Oz book, the Wizard of Oz Waddle Book with the punch-out waddles still intact, and a first edition (second state) copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Rare books dealer Dr Adrian Fluhmann, Zurich, Switzerland, proudly presented Henri Matisse’s Jazz , an artist’s book published in 1947 that contains about 100 prints based on his paper cutouts. The artist was reportedly ill and in his 70s when he began this exploration of a theme and could no longer draw or paint with ease, but could wield scissors to create cutouts.
Cohen & Taliaferro LLC, New York City, offered rare maps from an important private collection of 18 Renaissance examples, with the core of the collection comprising 15 maps published in Italy 1482‱597, a watershed period in Italian cartography.
The maps include: a rare map, predating Columbus’s first voyage by nearly 20 years, that is described as the first map ever published, not counting a small diagram three years earlier. This map, medieval and religious in origin, is the first to “try and show land forms and countries in topographical relation to each other.”
Other maps of interest included Albrecht Dürer’s world map of 1515 (the only terrestrial map by Dürer), Giacomo Gastaldi’s world map of 1546 that is said to be “one of the most important engraved maps of the Sixteenth Century” and an untitled proof copy of Giovanni Cimerlino’s rare world map of 1566, a striking map in heart-shaped projection and framed by elaborate decoration.
Peter Harrington Books, London, reported a good show, selling a first edition in unrestored original cloth of Darwin & King’s Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle , 1839 [i.e. The Voyage of the Beagle , including Darwin’s volume, Journal of Researches ] as well as Lord Byron’s copy, with pencil annotations in preparation for his translation of Luigi Pulci’s Morgante Maggiore (Venice, 1812), a work which he translated and also served as the formal model for Don Juan.
A standout among the offerings here was the fourth and final folio of the Seventeenth Century editions of Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories and Tragedies , published London, 1685, and offered in early Eighteenth Century mottled calf. The folio was published in keeping with the true original copies but added seven plays never before printed in folio. A first edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses , 1922, one of 100 signed copies on handmade Dutch paper was also spotted here.
Western Americana devotees, no doubt, would have found their hearts racing a bit faster in the booth of Donald A. Heald, New York City, which showed a first edition, first issue, of George Catlin’s North American Indian Portfolio , published in London, 1844. The full-color illustrations were lavish, including one depicting more than a dozen Native Americans performing “The Bear Dance,” and in another, a lone, massive buffalo grazes in a meadow with a wary eye for interlopers.
History buffs, too, were welcomed here and would be pleased by Sebastian Bauman’s copper engraving, “[Battle of Yorktown] To His Excellency Genl. Washington Commander in Chief of the Armies of the United States of America,” done in Philadelphia, 1782. The work had original hand coloring and the “References to British Lines” were set within a scroll while an explanation of the battlefield (set at lower center and enclosed in a rococo frame) details 18 key battlefield locations.
The dealers had arranged the Catlin near the center of an artfully arranged row of books, stacked vertically, with the shortest books at each end, with the row gradually getting taller on both sides. The tallest book was dead center in a design that mimicked the pitch of a roof. Asked how long this took to set up, the dealers laughingly admitted that four people spent three hours lining up the books just so.
James Cummins Bookseller, New York City, offered a fetching set of Cook’s Three Voyages, detailing Captain James Cook’s trips in: An Account of the Voyages&n the Southern Hemisphere , A Voyage towards the South Pole and Round the World and A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean , published respectively in 1773, 1777 and 1784.
Cummins also offered a fine association copy of Thomas de Grey’s The Compleat Horse-Man, and Expert Ferrier that Nathaniel Hawthorne reportedly gave Herman Melville on his birthday in 1851, the same year Melville’s iconic Moby Dick was published.
Fine examples of florilegium were seeded across the show among the dealers with Amsterdam dealers, Antiquariat Junk B.V., offering a first edition of Besler’s “Hortus Eystettensis&• 1613, in a broadsheet form with engraved title and 367 engraved plates. The species that grew in German gardens at this time nearly looked ready for picking on these pages.
The dealers also offered a first edition of T. Brown’s Illustrations of the American Ornithology of Alexander Wilson and Charles Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Musignano , which is among the most scarce color-plate books on American ornithology from the library of Frederick Ducane Godman. A census of this work only found seven complete and six incomplete copies.
At Justin Croft Antiquarian Books, Faversham, U.K., holding court was a first edition by Lady Mary Lady Wroth titled The Countess of Montgomeries Urania that was printed in London, 1621. Its significance stems from the fact that it was the first published work of original fiction in English by a woman. Wroth, the oldest daughter of Sir Robert Sidney and part of a literary family, was reportedly taken aback by the firestorm of criticism in Urania that her romance fiction unleashed, with her protesting that copies “were solde against my minde I never purposing to have had them published.”
Cataloged as the oldest and most complete set of Leipzig playing cards, the rare set of 89 cards, dated 1534‷7, with woodcuts, stencil colored in red, green, ochre and brown, were offered price on request at B&L Rootenberg Rare Books & Manuscripts, Sherman Oaks, Calif.
A proud addition to any medical collector’s bookshelves could be found in the stand of Bernard Quaritch Ltd, London, which featured a contemporary pigskin folio of a first edition of Anatomia Deudsch by Andrea Vesalius and Jacob Baumann, 1551, featuring the arms of Nuremberg on the title and 40 engraved plates. While Vesalius is credited in the introduction, this is what is known as a pirated copy put out by Bauman, a Nuremberg physician, and the first of dozens to make their way across Europe.
The dealer also showed Johannes de Ketham’s Fascilus medicinae , 1500, the last incunable edition of one of the most well-done medical books of the Fifteenth Century that has the distinction of being the first printed medical book to contain illustrations.
Bernard J. Shapero Rare Books, London, offered a first English edition of Duke of Newcastle William Cavendish’s A general system of horsemanship in all its branches , two volumes bound as one, along with a four-volume set of Andrea Palladio’s architecture, also first English edition.
For more information, www.sanfordsmith.com or 212-777-5218.
