January 2013 | Jeremy Dibbell

Auction Report: January Sales

A quick rundown of the January sales so far, and a look at what's coming up this week:

- PBA Galleries sold Architecture Books & Folios on 10 January, in 195 lots. Results are here. The top price, $8,400, went to a copy of Cornelius Gurlitt's Die Baukunst Konstantinopels (1912), a study of Istanbul architecture.

- Lyon & Turnbull held a Rare Books, Maps, Manuscripts & Photographs sale on 16 January, in 564 lots. Two lots fetched £7,500: an East India Company logbook of the Seaford (1703-1706), and another logbook, of HMS Kent (1800-1803).

- At Bloomsbury's Bibliophile Sale on 17 January, a partial set of Buffon's Histoire Naturelle (32 of 44 volumes) sold for £1,500.

- Swann held a Shelf Sale on 17 January. Ten volumes of reference books related to porcelain sold for $4,320.

- At Swann's 20th Century Illustration on 24 January, it was a set of 48 of Garth Williams/Rosemary Wells proof plates for the 50th Anniversary Edition of Charlotte's Web for the top price, at $28,800.

- Bloomsbury sold Antiquarian Books on 24 January, in 202 lots. Léon Bakst's Bakst: The Story of the Artist's Life (1923) came out on top at £7,000 (well above the £600-800 estimates).

- PBA Galleries sold Americana, Asian-American History, Travel, Maps & Views on 24 January, in 434 lots. Results are here. A copy of an early account of Frémont's expeditions (1847) fetched the highest price, at $14,400.

- Christie's sells Albrecht Durer Masterpieces from a Private Collection on 29 January, in 62 lots. A ~1501 St. Eustace rates the top estimate (so high that it's only available on request). Knight, Death and the Devil (1513) is estimated at $500,000-700,000, Melancholia I (1514) at $400,000-600,000, and St. Jerome in his Study (1514) at $300,000-500,000.

- Dominic Winter sells Printed Books, Maps & Ephemera on 30 January. A set of first impressions of each of the three Lord of the Rings books rates the top estimate, at £10,000-15,000.

- Bloomsbury sells Maps & Atlases, Drawings & Prints on 31 January, in 440 lots.