Signed books from George Washington’s library June 5, New York Auctioning the collection of George Washington at Sotheby’s New York, The Library of a Distinguished American Book Collector sold for $4,891,634 within pre-sale estimates. This was led by seven books from Washington’s Mount Vernon Library, all with his bold signature on their title pages and his bookplate which achieved $1,205,000. This was the largest group of books from Washington’s library to appear in a single...
A profile of the international Bloomsbury auction house with Rupert Powell, managing director. Bloomsbury Auctions was founded in 1983 by a triumvirate of ex-Sotheby’s employees from the book department. Back then, Sotheby’s attitude was that books of small value, under £300, were not worth handling, but there were certainly plenty of people who were interested in books worth less than £300—John Kerr, Frank Herrmann and David Stagg among them. In the financial downturn of 1981-82...
A sale of a unique collection of cookbooks made the headlines in July 2013, while a soft toy menagerie delights collectors. July 2013 saw a feast of cookbooks come up for sale at Sotheby’s, in one of the most remarkable specialist books sales for many years. It was a remarkable both for the breadth of cookery topics covered, the age range of these culinary compendiums (from the sixteenth to the twentieth century), and for the...
