Written by Meghan Dailey
Written by Meghan Dailey

Art, Antiques, and Collections: Year In Review 1998

Article Free Pass
Written by Meghan Dailey

Antiquarian Books

A strong market for fine antiquarian books marked the 1997-98 season. The rapid rise of commerce on the Internet resulted in the publication of on-line book catalogs and a number of sales. In New York City, Sotheby’s held its first on-line auction, selling a variety of books and manuscripts, notably from the Donald Stralem collection.

Important, rare, and beautiful books in a wide range of subjects fetched huge prices in a very competitive international arena. Science, medical, travel, and colour-plate books all performed especially well, as did atlases and exceptional illuminated manuscripts.

The library of the duke and duchess of Windsor, which included over 600 lots of books, manuscripts, and related items, sold at Sotheby’s New York for the astonishing price of $2.3 million. Winston Churchill’s World Crisis, inscribed to the prince of Wales, fetched $145,500, and John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, inscribed to both the duke and the duchess, made over $39,000.

In single-owner sales Christie’s began its season with the Giannalisa Feltrinelli Library of Italian Books. The large library (over 1,800 lots) was dispersed over the year in sales at five venues. The highlight of the sales was a copy of Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499, Venice)--with provenance dating back to the 17th century--which sold for $220,000. An early humanist illuminated manuscript of Virgil’s Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid brought just over $1 million.

Sotheby’s New York sold for just over $2 million the Highly Important Americana from the Stanley Paul Sax Collection, which included 50 lots of books. Major works rising to record levels included George Catlin’s North American Indian Portfolio ($107,000) and Yellowstone National Park ($140,000).

The collection of fine books in exquisite bindings and illuminated manuscripts owned by Jaime Ortiz-Patiño was offered by Sotheby’s New York, and the top performer, at $3.3 million, was the superlative "Hours of St.-Lô," one of the finest recent examples of an illuminated manuscript to come on the market. Guillaume Apollinaire’s Le Bestiaire, a presentation copy to artists Robert and Sonia Delaunay, sold for $220,000. Apollinaire’s rare Case D’Armons, one of 25 copies, sold for $120,000. The magnificent Duchesse de Berry copy of Pierre Joseph Redouté’s Les Roses (1817-24, Paris) brought $400,000.

In July Christie’s London hammered down "the most expensive [printed] book ever sold" at the sale of English incunabula from the Wentworth Library. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, printed in 1476-77 by William Caxton, brought £4.6 million ($7.6 million); the sale--which included seven other major early English printed books, including Caxton’s Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye--yielded almost $10 million.

Take Quiz Add To This Article
Share Stories, photos and video Surprise Me!

Do you know anything more about this topic that you’d like to share?

Please select the sections you want to print
Select All
MLA style:
"Art, Antiques, and Collections: Year In Review 1998". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 21 Aug. 2014
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1018427/Art-Antiques-and-Collections-Year-In-Review-1998/231614/Antiquarian-Books>.
APA style:
Art, Antiques, and Collections: Year In Review 1998. (2014). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1018427/Art-Antiques-and-Collections-Year-In-Review-1998/231614/Antiquarian-Books
Harvard style:
Art, Antiques, and Collections: Year In Review 1998. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 21 August, 2014, from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1018427/Art-Antiques-and-Collections-Year-In-Review-1998/231614/Antiquarian-Books
Chicago Manual of Style:
Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. "Art, Antiques, and Collections: Year In Review 1998", accessed August 21, 2014, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1018427/Art-Antiques-and-Collections-Year-In-Review-1998/231614/Antiquarian-Books.

While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies.
Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.

Click anywhere inside the article to add text or insert superscripts, subscripts, and special characters.
You can also highlight a section and use the tools in this bar to modify existing content:
We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles.
You can make it easier for us to review and, hopefully, publish your contribution by keeping a few points in mind:
  1. Encyclopaedia Britannica articles are written in a neutral, objective tone for a general audience.
  2. You may find it helpful to search within the site to see how similar or related subjects are covered.
  3. Any text you add should be original, not copied from other sources.
  4. At the bottom of the article, feel free to list any sources that support your changes, so that we can fully understand their context. (Internet URLs are best.)
Your contribution may be further edited by our staff, and its publication is subject to our final approval. Unfortunately, our editorial approach may not be able to accommodate all contributions.
(Please limit to 900 characters)

Or click Continue to submit anonymously:

Continue
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1018427/Art-Antiques-and-Collections-Year-In-Review-1998/231614/Antiquarian-Books
www.britannica.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-35
52478
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:KRWANXZDW7FXXCLW7CKWKKJEVYSHLF5C
<urn:uuid:e7667fc1-5bcc-4021-ba16-52fe805f8301>
2014-08-21T13:00:43Z
208.185.238.124
sha1:G2N4XFRZL6NQMV2PMGYIUDJZAOEJUK3C
<urn:uuid:b84a426e-af5e-4178-b839-24eae8c8f812>
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1018427/Art-Antiques-and-Collections-Year-In-Review-1998/231614/Antiquarian-Books
response
<urn:uuid:5175fa5e-ce6d-447c-abc7-77713ebfcc0b>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-35
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for August 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf