Coming up on 13 February is an auction that bookworms will adore. It is the Bonhams & Butterfields Fine Books & Manuscripts auction. A number of rare, vintage manuscripts will be going under the hammer as the auction gets underway, and collectors had better be prepared.
Among the top picks at the auction is a book focussing primarily on the California region that features 100 hand-coloured lithograph plates German-Russian painter Louis Choris. Choris was also an explorer which explains why there are also scenes from Chile, the Philippines and Alaska. The book is valued at about $100,000 to $150,000.
Another collectible is a second-edition The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands by naturalist Mark Catesby, featuring 220 hand-coloured plates as illustration. This is also valued between $100,000 and $150,000.
Poetry enthusiasts would appreciate a typed letter by poet Sylvia Plath containing her poem ‘Lament’. The letter is valued between $15,000 and $20,000.
Fans of Walt Disney are in for a special treat – Disney’s signature on a First Class menu of a PanAm flight, an original Donald Duck comic strip and a photo of Disney. The Disney lot is valued around $1,000 to $2,000.
Also going under the hammer is Mark Twain’s signature on a Lotos Club dinner menu valued between $1,000 and $1,500. There is also a complete eight-volume set of explorer James Cook’s travels to Tahiti, Australia and other areas of the South Pacific, valued between $25,000 and $30,000.
Books containing selections by H.G. Wells, Lord Alfred Tennyson and Harriet Beecher Stowe also go up for auction, along with a piece of hand-made ‘kadder’ cloth produced in Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram. Certainly, this is an auction that collectors cannot afford to miss.
