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ANTIQUES

By Wendy Moonan
Published: November 14, 2003

Time to Write Finis For a Book Trove

''Book collecting is as wide as your imagination,'' said Mary Ann Folter, a daughter of Hans Peter Kraus, who was the renowned Manhattan antiquarian bookseller and manuscript dealer. ''There are no rules about how to do it. It's a very personal thing.'' Ms. Folter spent years absorbing the book business at her father's store, H. P. Kraus. ''I learned by being exposed to it,'' she said. ''We traveled together to Europe to see customers, visit libraries and attend sales.''

Her father, who died in 1988, was interested in early printing, illuminated manuscripts and book illustration from 1452 to 1800. One star of his inventory is a 1561 copy of Martin Luther's translation of the Bible, illustrated with woodcuts by Lucas Cranach the Younger.

H. P. Kraus occupied an entire town house at 16 East 46th Street. (Her father ''wanted to be close to the New York Public Library and the Morgan Library,'' Ms. Folter said.) After Kraus died, his Austrian-born wife, Hanni, ran the business until her death in January. The five Kraus children decided to sell the Kraus reference library and inventory in separate auctions.

Next week, from Tuesday through Thursday, Sotheby's is selling the extensive reference library, which occupied four floors and kept five employees busy. The viewing is at the East 46th Street shop through Monday. Information: (212) 606-7385. ''To our knowledge, H. P. Kraus had without doubt the largest and most complete reference library of books on the subject of bibliography ever put together by a book dealer anywhere,'' said Selby Kiffer, the specialist in charge of the sale.

The Kraus inventory will be sold in New York on Dec. 4 and 5 and in early June. In addition, Hellmut Schumann, a Kraus subsidiary in Zurich, is to auction its stock in Munich in June. Sotheby's estimates the value of the entire collection at $9 million to $12 million.

Austrian by birth, Kraus acquired his first rare book as a teenager. As he recounts in his autobiography, ''A Rare Book Saga'' (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1978), it was a rare 1595 Mercator atlas. In 1932 he opened his own store in Vienna.

In 1938, after the Nazi invasion, he was sent to Dachau and Buchenwald, but was released in 1939. He was abruptly told to leave Austria within two months. With help from a former colleague, the librarian of the Swedish Royal Library, he got a visa to Sweden. From there he traveled to the United States.

He arrived in New York in 1939 on Columbus Day, a good omen as he was traveling with one of his few salvaged possessions, a copy of a rare 1494 letter by Christopher Columbus, the Verardus edition. He sold it and opened a tiny shop at 21 East 57th Street.

''It wasn't so hard getting established,'' Ms. Folter said. ''A lot of people in the book trade in Central Europe came to this country at that time. They all knew each other.''

He married Hanni Zucker in 1940 and in 1945 moved his shop to East 46th Street.

''It's a small industry, but it tended to be lucrative,'' Ms. Folter said. ''University libraries like Harvard and Yale would make appointments to see special things that we would have to bring over from a bank vault. People would come in for classics by Homer and Dante in the original language. Others were interested in our illuminated manuscripts.''

The Sotheby's sale has some highly decorative copies of original manuscripts that are estimated to be worth only a few hundred dollars each. The bibliography collection includes books of literature, travel and exploration, science and medicine, natural history, religion, music and fine arts. Some are elaborately illustrated.

Lot 587, for example, is a facsimile of a work in the Morgan Library: Sydney C. Cockerell's ''Book of the Old Testament.'' According to the catalog, Cardinal Bernard Maciejowski sent the original 13th-century book to Shah Abbas the Great, king of Persia, in the 1500's.

Mr. Cockerell made a limited edition copy for the Roxburghe Club in London in 1927, with 90 plates, several in color. One plate has four frames, like a cartoon, depicting the Old Testament story of the young widow Ruth and her future husband, Boaz.

They wear pumpkin-orange and pale-green clothes, and are set against backgrounds of dusty rose and royal blue. Each face has an individual expression. The estimate for the copy is $1,500 to $2,000.

Clocks for All Seasons

The field of antique American clocks is so specialized and complicated that most collectors must rely on dependable dealers. That will be possible at the Connoisseur's Antiques Fair, which opens on Thursday and continues through Nov. 23 in the 69th Regiment Armory at 26th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.

George Subkoff, the president of the Art and Antique Dealers League of America, sponsor of the 50-dealer show, is bringing an exceptional American tall-case clock made by Aaron Willard of Boston (circa 1800-1810).

Willard was the brother of an even more famous clockmaker, Simon Willard (1753-1848), who patented the popular banjo clock and is said to have made more than 5,000 timepieces from 1802 to 1840.

The Aaron Willard clock is 95 inches tall. Its hood has three brass finials and carved fretwork. The center and base have inlaid satinwood pateras. ''It is an excellent example,'' Mr. Subkoff said.

Amphora Pottery

The Triple Pier Antiques Show, with 600 dealers, is this weekend at 12th Avenue and 55th Street in Manhattan. John Cobabe's booth on Pier 92 will have some truly original Bohemian pottery, Amphora wares from Teplitz, Austria.

The ceramist Alfred Stellmacher founded the Amphora Company in 1860, but it didn't really take off until 1892, when his sons began producing ceramics inspired by the Art Nouveau movement.

Some vases depict beautiful maidens from Arthurian tales or Greek legends, but the more interesting ones are bizarre, three-dimensional vases with winged dragons, screeching bats, beady-eyed pelicans and venom-spewing snakes. They are painted in hues of deep blue, green, purple, ivory and gold.

''Amphora wares were introduced at the Austria pavilions in the big world expositions in Paris in 1900 and Chicago in 1893,'' said James Infante, Mr. Cobabe's business partner of 12 years. ''They won awards. Wealthy Americans went to the fairs and ordered them.''

Coincidentally, Mr. Infante has his own booth with, yes, a few more Amphora wares, in the ''Modernism'' show at the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue (through Sunday), as does Jason Jacques, a young dealer with a new gallery at 40 West 25th Street in Chelsea. Mr. Jacques has 12 of his 40 Amphora wares at the show, with prices ranging from $3,500 to $55,000. Suddenly, it seems, Art Nouveau is back with a bang.

Photo: An early 19th-century tall-case clock by Aaron Willard of Boston. (Photo by George Subkoff Antiques)
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