News

Early printed books at Swann, featuring Part II of the Ken Rapoport Collection

This feature first appeared on ArtDaily,com

4th October, 2022

Swann Galleries in New York will hold an Early Printed Books sale on Thursday 13th October that will include works from the Early Modern/Enlightenment period, starting with the Manny Coleman Collection, as well as publications on economics, science, medicine and travel, and will feature part two of the collection of Ken Rapoport.

The house’s spring offering of Ken Rapoport’s collection delivered outstanding results for rare printings of iconic works of English and Spanish literature. The fall auction prepares to deliver the same with 125 lots on the auction block representing the collection’s strengths. Highlights include early editions of Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Geoffrey Chaucer and more.

Opening the auction is a small collection of books formed by bibliophile Stephen White after White acquired a portion of the Manny Coleman collection in 2001. Of note is a rare selection of French satirical prints from the mid-seventeenth century by Jacques Lagniet ($25,000-35,000), and a first edition of Robert Allott’s Wits Theater of the Little World, 1599 ($6,000-8,000).

Important works in Economics include editions by John Maynard Keynes, Thomas Robert Malthus, and John Locke, along with several works by Adam Smith, and a first edition of John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy, London, 1848 ($3,000-4,000).

A selection of titles relating to science and medicine feature with Charles Darwin’s Journal of Researches in Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle, London, 1839 ($6,000-9,000); as well as a first edition of Sigmund Freud’s first published paper ($600-800), Domingo Royo’s rare 1734 work on the veterinary care of horses ($1,500-2,500); a physician’s illustrated notebook from England in the mid-nineteenth century ($500-700); and New and Important Improvements in Mechanical Dentistry, West Chester, PA, 1855, by Sharpless Clayton with an original set of Clayton’s patented false teeth ($400-600).

Travel features Sebastian Pedro Cubero’s Peregrinacion que ha Hecho de la Mayor Parte del Mundo, Zaragoza & Valencia, 1688 & 1697, in which he tracks his journey as a Catholic missionary from Europe to Asian and then the Americas through Mexico and east to Cuba, as well as his time in Europe ($4,000-6,000). José Antonio Villaseñor y Sánchez’s Theatro Americano, Mexico, 1746-48, documents fresh information on the towns and missions of New Spain, as well as California, Texas and New Mexico ($2,500-3,500). Charles William Janson’s The Stranger in America, London, 1807, is available, with detailed depictions of Philadelphia, Boston, Hell Gate in New York Harbor, the Bank of the United States, Mount Vernon, and the Death of Washington ($3,000-5,000).

Additional highlights include a Book of Hours with illuminated miniatures from France in the late fifteenth century ($20,000-30,000); an edition of William Shakespeare’s King Lear, printed by Jane Bell in 1655 ($10,000-15,000); and Christoph Ernst Prediger’s eighteenth-century work in German on bookbinding and box-making ($3,000-5,000).

Exhibition hours are 12 pm to 5 pm on 7, 11 and 12^th October 2022.

Live online bidding platforms will be the Swann Galleries App, Invaluable, and Live Auctioneers.