Antique Maps Auction Preview For Week Of October 31, 2005

November 3 is the date for PBA Galleries’s Fine Books & Manuscripts Sale. I can attest that PBA is a great auction to bid at – I won an item last week, on an absentee bid, and they actually called me after the auction to advise me of a couple of additional condition notes about the antique map I had purchased. They even offered me the opportunity to decline the item if desired. That’s great customer service, and PBA Galleries should be complimented.

Audubon Quadrupeds Prints And Pheasant Prints

Lot 3 is a 3-volume, octavo set of Audubon’s Quadrupeds of North America, published by V. G. Audubon between 1849 and 1854. Condition is said to be extremely good, and the estimated hammer price is $7,000-10,000. That seems high, but we’ll see next week.

A nice set of pheasant plates follows right behind the quads. Lot 4 is A Monograph of the Pheasants, by Charles Beebe, 1918, and has a presale estimate of $3,000-5,000. There are 90 color plates in this limited edition folio.

Cook’s Voyages, And Rare African Geography With Maps

“Stunning” is the word PBA uses to describe lot 36: a six-volume set of Cook’s Voyages, and the first Hogg edition. (London, 1785). The presale estimate of $2000-3,000 looks like it will be surpassed, if the set is as nice as it sounds.

Lot 89 is A Geographical Historie of Africa, by John Leo, published in London in 1600 by George Bishop. It is the first English edition, with an extra folding plate and an extra folding map by Overton. Condition is described as extremely good, and the presale is set at $5,000-8,000.

Fine Botanical Prints On Display

James Sowerby’s English Botany shows up as lot 136, a ten-volume run containing 711 of 720 plates. The bindings are in poor shape on at least half the volumes, but the plates are described as fine in most cases. Presale estimate is $2,000-3,000.

The best-in-show in the botanical prints department, and a jewel of the auction, is a rare volume of hand-colored Redoute prints. Description des plantes nouvelles…dans le jardin de J. M. Cels, by E. P. Ventenat, (Paris, 1800) contains 100 hand-colored engravings, mostly after drawings by Pierre-Joseph Redoute. A folio, large paper copy, in fine condition. Lot 138, it is estimated at $25,000-35,000.