Bloomsbury’s summer Bibliophile sale (17th and 18th July) was a good, solid sale.
Amongst the Oil Paintings, Watercolours and drawings a mixed group (lot 12) of English School material fared especially well selling for £1600, well over the estimate of £250-350. Amongst the Gilbert and Sullivan items a collection of documentary material including inscribed photographs (lot 190), went for £1200, four times the high estimate. Theatrical costumes and related items did very well. The Decorative Art of Leon Bakst (1913) by Jean Cocteau and Arsene Alexandre sold for a healthy £1900, against an estimate of £600-800 (lot 234) while the following lot, a rare collection of Impressions of the Russian Ballet (lot 235) by the theatrical bookseller, critic and friend of Diaghilev, Cyril W Beaumont, fetched £1800 (estimate £1000-1500). Bakst was obviously in demand, Levinson’s Bakst (lot 240) fetched four times the lower estimate at £1200 and the Inedited Works of Bakst by Louis Reau (lot 244) made £2200 (estimate £1000-1500).
Amongst the Typography, The Printer’s International Specimen Exchange in 3 vols (lot 304) sold for £1500, three times the higher estimate. In the Middle East Travel section lot 348, Colonel CM Macgregor’s Journey Through Khorassan of 1879 was snapped up for £1700, well over its estimate of £750-1000 and The Royal English Atlas, being a complete collection of new and accurate maps by Thomas Kitchin and Emanuel Bowen (lot 380) fetched £5500, comfortably over the estimate of £3000-4000.
The Wind in the Willows number 213 of 250 by Kenneth Grahame and signed by the artist Ernest H Shepard (lot 852), went for £920 (estimate £750-1000) while a first edition of AA Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh (lot 862) made a very healthy £1800, against its £800-1200 estimate.
www.bloomsburyauctions.com