• High Bids Win
    Letterpress & Bindery Auction
    Nov. 20 – Dec. 5, 2024
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Book Press 10 1/2× 15 1/4" Platen , 2 1/2" Daylight.
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: The Tubbs Mfg Co. wooden-type cabinet 27” w by 37” h by 22” deep.
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: G.P.Gordon printing press 7” by 11” with treadle. Needs rollers, trucks, and grippers. Missing roller spring.
    High Bids Win
    Letterpress & Bindery Auction
    Nov. 20 – Dec. 5, 2024
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: D & C Ventris curved wood type 2” tall 5/8” wide.
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Wood Type 1 1/4” tall.
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Quarter Case with Lead Triangles.
    High Bids Win
    Letterpress & Bindery Auction
    Nov. 20 – Dec. 5, 2024
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Page & Co wood type 1 1/4” tall 1/4” wide.
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Awt 578 type hi gauge.
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Quarter Case with Lead Penline Flourishes.
    High Bids Win
    Letterpress & Bindery Auction
    Nov. 20 – Dec. 5, 2024
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Quarter Case with Lead Penline Flourishes.
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Quarter Case with Lead Cents and Pound Signs.
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Wooden type cabinet 27” w by 19” d by 38” h.
  • ALDE, Dec. 11: ALBINUS (BERNHARD SIEGFIED). Tabulæ Sceleti et Musculorum corporis humanum, Londres, 1749. €4,000 to €5,000.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: BIDLOO (GOVARD). Anatomia humani corporis. Centum et quinque tabulis per artificiosiss. G. de Lairesse..., Amsterdam, 1685.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: BOURGERY (JEAN-MARC) – JACOB (NICOLAS-HENRI). Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’Homme comprenant la médecine opératoire, Paris, 1832. €4,000 to €5,000.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: CALDANI (LEOPOLDO MARCANTONIO ET FLORIANO). Icones anatomicae, Venice, 1801-14. €5,000 to €6,000.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: CARSWELL (ROBERT). Pathological Anatomy. Illustrations of the elementary forms of disease, London, 1838. €5,000 to €6,000.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: CASSERIUS (JULIUS) [GIULIO CASSERIO]. De vocis auditusq. organis historia anatomica singulari fide methodo ac industria concinnata tractatis duobus explicate, Ferrara, 1600-1601. €4,000 to €5,000.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: ESTIENNE (CHARLES). De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres, Paris, 1545. €8,000 to €10,000.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: GAMELIN (JACQUES). Nouveau Recueil d'Ostéologie et de Myologie dessiné d'après nature... pour l’utilité des sciences et des arts, divisé en deux parties, Toulouse, 1779. €6,000 to €8,000.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: ROESSLIN (EUCHER). Des divers travaux et enfantemens des femmes et par quel moyen l'on doit survenir aux accidens…, Paris, 1536. €3,000 to €4,000.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: RUYSCH (FREDERICK). Thesaurus anatomicus - Anatomisch Cabinet, Amsterdam, 1701-1714. €3,000 to €4,000.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: VALVERDE (JUAN DE). Anatome corporis humani. Nunc primum a Michaele Michaele Columbo latine reddita, et additis novis aliquot tabulis exornata, Venetiis, 1589. €2,000 to €3,000.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: VESALIUS (ANDREAS). De humani Corporis Fabrica libri septem, Venetiis, 1568. €3,000 to €4,000.
  • Sotheby's
    Fine Books, Manuscripts & More
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s: J.R.R. Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. 11,135 USD
    Sotheby’s: Edgar Allan Poe. The Raven and Other Poems, 1845. 33,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Leo Tolstoy, Clara Bow. War and Peace, 1886. 22,500 USD
    Sotheby’s: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1902. 7,500 USD
    Sotheby’s: F. Scott Fitzgerald. This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, and Others, 1920-1941. 24,180 USD
  • Doyle, Dec. 5: Minas Avetisian (1928-1975). Rest, 1973. $8,000 to $12,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (1876-1973). Yawning Tiger, conceived 1917. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Robert M. Kulicke (1924-2007). Full-Blown Red and White Roses in a Glass Vase, 1982. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). L’ATELIER DE CANNES (Bloch 794; Mourlot 279). The cover for Ces Peintres Nos Amis, vol. II. $1,000 to $1,500.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: LeRoy Neiman (1921-2012). THE BEACH AT CANNES, 1979. $1,200 to $1,800.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Richard Avendon, the suite of eleven signed portraits from the Avedon/Paris portfolio. $150,000 to $250,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989). Flowers in Vase, 1985. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Edward Weston (1886-1958). Nude, 1936. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Edward Weston (1886-1958). Juniper, High Sierra, 1937.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Steven J. Levn (b. 1964). Plumage II, 2011. $6,000 to $8,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Steven Meisel (b. 1954). Madonna, Miami, (from Sex), 1992. $6,000 to $9,000.

Rare Book Monthly

Articles - April - 2014 Issue

Stephan Loewentheil founder of the 19th Century Shop: a 3-decade perspective and an exceptional catalog to Celebrate 30 Years in the Trade

Catalog No. 150:  Icons of Western Civilization

 

Catalogues tell stories, some complex and others simple.  Book catalogues, not so long ago, were all or mostly books.  Today, while books remain the bedrock of information transfer, they share the stage with manuscripts, maps, documents and photographs as over the decades precedence of appearance has increasingly trumped presentation and books, often early but often not the earliest introduction of an idea, have increasingly found themselves desired but not the most desirable.  For first references to seminal ideas manuscripts, letters, proof copies and photographs often if not always precede books.  If there are rules, they are conditional because our understanding and expectations adjust as we move back in time, our perception a changing Alice’s Looking Glass view. 

 

What we can expect to find in the 20th century is almost always fresh and complete, what we find from the 15th century more often manuscript or examples of early printing.  In between, however expressed or printed, the form is often less important than the ideas expressed, ideas that have themselves moved the world or signaled profound changes.  Once one is then freed from any specific form the pursuit of the iconic early or unique expression emerges as a logical way to understand and collect and this is where Catalogue 150 takes us – on a journey to and among Icons of Civilization.  It follows the ideas and in so doing leads us across a patchwork quilt of possibilities, equally comfortable with images, maps, books, and manuscripts.  And pursued to its logical end this is a form of collecting that changes as more information is gathered, an open ended pursuit of evolving perception.

 

Catalogues with great intentions are invariably the outcome of decades of experience.  I asked Stephan Loewentheil, the founder of the 19th Century Shop, to both look back and ahead.  At 64 he’s been collecting for 35 years, as a dealer selling for thirty and issuing on average 5 catalogs a year.  He has taken a path only occasionally seen, the trained lawyer who chooses not to practice, in his case initially to run a historical renovation project in Baltimore that later lead to a divided life, organizer/rebuilder by day and a committed book sleuth by night.  In time he and his wife Beth concluded he would try, for three years, to become a professional rare book dealer.  If it didn’t work out he would practice law.  Thirty years later his career is no longer pending confirmation.  If it was once the road less taken it has become the path by which he has excelled in a personally distinctive way, his interest in unearthing obscure bibliographic details leading to the acquisition of underappreciated rarities, seminal documents and early historic photographic images.

 

His more than three decades in the trade has seen the field of paper collectibles in flux as Internet awareness has increased what we know and often redefined collecting taste and methods.  “In the 1980s what we studied and sold was well understood.  Today we are continuously learning, unearthing new materials and new formats to be added to the great tradition of the book.  The process of and experience of change in the transmission of knowledge and collecting has affected the 19th Century Shop.  Simply stated, we are today refocused as the 19th Century Rare Book & Photograph Shop:  rare books, manuscripts, and photographs representing mankind’s greatest achievements.  The world is more focused on the crucial and the first and we have changed with it, expanding deeply into great manuscripts and photography.”

 

Deciding what is important is the life’s work of some of the greatest dealers:  the one hundred most influential books, the most important events, the earliest images that exist.  To put them into a catalogue also means you had to acquire them, looking for years and stepping ahead of others to reach these prizes one by one.  H. P. Kraus, the legendary New York book dealer did this several times and perhaps most memorably published Catalogue 185 that went so unappreciated virtually nothing sold for almost ten years.  Fabulous material doesn’t always catch the market’s immediate fancy.     

 

Choosing items from the tens of thousands acquired over a lifetime to be set aside for inclusion in a memorable catalogue to be presented years into the future, to we now know, celebrate thirty years in business and confirm his commitment to the collecting of important ideas and their earliest origins, this catalogue arrives at the very moment when the field now embraces seminal documents and works as the gold standard for important collections.  Catalogue 150 brings us up-to-date.  If Mr. Loewenthiel early perfected a vision of what a collection could be, with this 30th anniversary catalogue, he shows where his thinking is today.  And it’s remarkable: 

 

We are pleased to offer an unpublished Age of Discovery manuscript with otherwise unrecorded information by one of Columbus’s shipmates, the earliest known photograph of John D. Rockefeller, two exceptional copies of The Federalist, two of the greatest photographic publications of the 19th century (Barnard’s Photographic Views of Sherman’s Campaign and Russell’s The Great West), first editions of Newton’s Principia and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, signed photographs of Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln by Alexander Gardner, and many others. We offer the icons of civilization from throughout history—the books, manuscripts, and photographs that represent mankind’s greatest achievements.”

 

Here are descriptions for the 10 items illustrated in this article:

 

Lot 4. Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion (1887), first edition of this landmark of photography and technology. $120,000

 

Lot 14. (Christopher Columbus.) Important unpublished 1512 manuscript concerning the voyages to the New World by Columbus, Vespucci, and others. POR

 

Lot 22. The Federalist (1788), an exceptional copy of the first edition in original boards, signed by Roger Alden, whom George Washington entrusted with the original signed Constitution, $450,000


Lot 28. Theodor Herzl, Der Judenstaat (1896), first edition, presentation copy of the "Manifesto of Zionism" inscribed to Herzl's friend playwright Arthur Schnitzler. $160,000

 

Lot 60. Walt Whitman, Autograph manuscript comparing Leaves of Grass with works of Wordsworth and Bryant. $35,000

 

Lot 80. A. J. Russell, The Great West (1869), first edition, illustrated with 50 large-format albumen photographs documenting the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad and the land through which it ran. $325,000

 

Lot 88. Alexander Hamilton. Letter Concerning the Conduct and Character of John Adams (1800) "one of only a few copies printed for Hamilton as a private circular," one of the origins of the Hamilton-Burr duel, inscribed and signed by Hamilton. $70,000


Lot 122. Wernher von Braun, Signed drawing of a spaceship (1952), by the father of the American space program. $25,000

 

Lot 127. Emancipated Slaves albumen photograph (1863), one of the great American slavery photographs. $18,000

 

Lot 130. Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), first edition of the Principia, "the greatest work in the history of science" (PMM), in an untouched contemporary binding. POR

 

What follows next is a downloadable version of this catalogue:

 

www.19thshop.com/catalogues  Download the complete catalogue.

 

The 19th Century Rare Book and Photograph Shop

email: info@19thshop.com

 

Maryland
10400 Stevenson Road, Suite 100
Stevenson, MD 21153 USA

phone: (410) 602-3002
fax: (410) 602-3006

 

New York
446 Kent Avenue PH-A
Brooklyn, NY  11249  USA

phone: (347) 529-4534
fax: (347) 529-6779

Rare Book Monthly

  • Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction November 25th
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    H. Schedel, Liber chronicarum, 1493. Est: € 25,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    P. O. Runge, Farben-Kugel, 1810. Est: € 8,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    W. Kandinsky, Klänge, 1913. Est: € 20,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction November 25th
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    W. Burley, De vita et moribus philosophorum, 1473. Est: € 4,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    M. B. Valentini, Viridarium reformatum seu regnum vegetabile, 1719. Est: € 12,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    PAN, 10 volumes, 1895-1900. Est: € 15,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction November 25th
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    J. de Gaddesden, Rosa anglica practica medicinae, 1492. Est: € 12,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    M. Merian, Todten-Tanz, 1649. Est: € 5,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    D. Hammett, Red harvest, 1929. Est: € 11,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction November 25th
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    Book of hours, Horae B. M. V., 1503. Est: € 9,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    J. Miller, Illustratio systematis sexualis Linneai, 1792. Est: € 8,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    F. Hundertwasser, Regentag – Look at it on a rainy day, 1972. Est: € 8,000
  • Gonnelli:
    Auction 55
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    November 26st 2024
    Gonnelli: Stefano Della Bella, 23 animal plances,1641. Starting price 480€
    Gonnelli: Stefano Della Bella, Boar Hunt, 1654. Starting price 180€
    Gonnelli: Crispijn Van de Passe, The seven Arts, 1637. Starting price 600€
    Gonnelli: Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, La Maschera è cagion di molti mali, 1688. Starting price 320€
    Gonnelli: Biribissor’s game, 1804-15. Starting price 2800€
    Gonnelli: Nicolas II de Larmessin, Habitats,1700. Starting price 320€
    Gonnelli: Miniature “O”, 1400. Starting price 1800€
    Gonnelli: Jan Van der Straet, Hunt scenes, 1596. Starting Price 140€
    Gonnelli: Massimino Baseggio, Costantinople, 1787. Starting price 480€
    Gonnelli: Kawanabe Kyosai, Erotic scene lighten up by a candle, 1860. Starting price 380€
    Gonnelli: Duck shaped dropper, 1670. Starting price 800€
  • Doyle, Dec. 6: An extensive archive of Raymond Chandler’s unpublished drafts of fantasy stories. $60,000 to $80,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: RAND, AYN. Single page from Ayn Rand’s handwritten first draft of her influential final novel Atlas Shrugged. $30,000 to $50,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: Ernest Hemingway’s first book with interesting provenance. Three Stories & Ten Poems. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: Hemingway’s second book, one of 170 copies. In Our Time. $15,000 to $25,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: A finely colored example of Visscher’s double hemisphere world map, with a figured border. $12,000 to $18,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: Raymond Chandler’s Olivetti Studio 44 Typewriter. $10,000 to $20,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: Antonio Ordóñez's “Suit of Lights” owned by Ernest Hemingway. $10,000 to $20,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: A remarkable Truman archive featuring an inscribed beam from the White House construction. $8,000 to $12,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: The fourth edition of Audubon’s The Birds of America. $8,000 to $12,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: The original typed manuscript for Chandler’s only opera. The Princess and the Pedlar: An Entirely Original Comic Opera. $8,000 to $12,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: A splendidly illustrated treatise on ancient Peru and its Incan civilization. $7,000 to $10,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: A superb copy of Claude Lorrain’s Liber Veritatis from Longleat House. $5,000 to $8,000.

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