Seven years after joining Sotheby’s New York Books and Manuscripts Department as an associate cataloguer, Dr. Kalika Sands has been appointed the Head of the department. Richard Austin, the Global Head of Department for Books and Manuscripts—who had been doing double-duty as Head of New York—announced Sands’s new position, commenting “Kalika's dedication and success as Head of Sale in New York positions her to even greater accomplishments as Department Head, working alongside our colleagues in London and Paris to continue Sotheby's Books and Manuscripts market strength both in the US and abroad.”
Kalika Sands is a native of Vermont and grew up attending estate and other local auctions on an almost weekly basis with her parents, who would provide her with ten dollars and a paddle. She attended Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont, and with her bachelor’s degree in hand decamped to the United Kingdom for nine years. While abroad, Sands she earned a doctorate at Oxford, studying the intersection of nineteenth-century English literature with science and medicine. She has subsequently presented parts of her research in scholarly lectures and conferences in both the UK and US.
While in Oxford, Sands worked at Blackwell’s and the Bodleian, where she was assistant curator for an exhibition of first-hand accounts of the Great War. She also served as exhibitors’ liaison for the first Ink London book fair in 2016. Although her studies were to prepare her for life in the academy, Sands found the pull of physical books and manuscripts too strong to resist. Since joining Sotheby’s, Sands has played an integral role in the sales of the official edition of the United States Constitution and other documents from the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation as well as the collections of Ira Lipman, Ricky Jay, Jay Kislak, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Rodney Swantko, and many others—most recently and most extensively, Bibliotheca Brookeriana. Her skillful navigation of this last, complicated project, with components to be sold in London and Paris, as well as New York, is likely what prompted her promotion.
When reached for comment, Sands said, “I am thrilled by this opportunity, and look forward to working even more closely with Sotheby’s dedicated and talented global Books and Manuscripts team.”
Sands inherits a department in strong standing. Twice in the past three years Sotheby’s New York has shattered the longstanding auction record of $30,802,000 for a book or manuscript set almost exactly thirty years ago by the Leonardo Codex Hammer: first, in November 2021, with a copy of the Official Edition of the United States Constitution ($43,173,000); and again in May 2023 with Codex Sassoon, an early tenth-century manuscript of the Hebrew Bible ($38,126,000). Perhaps more impressive, across three small live sales and a larger online auction during the last week of this past June, the New York department sold $19,350,000 of books and manuscripts in just 165 lots (of course, a number of other lots were offered but unsold). The live auctions on June 26 included five lots for more than a million dollars, which was unprecedented in one day of auctioning books and manuscripts. The top lot, whose consignment Sands helped to secure, was a fine copy of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience at $4,320,000; the sale of “Founding Documents of the United States” had a July 11, 1776, newspaper printing of the Declaration make $3,360,000, the first publication of the Constitution make $1,020,000, and an early handbill of the Bill of Rights printed for the Pennsylvania legislature make $1,200,000. As a counterpoint to this earlier and more traditional material, the original artwork for the cover of the first Harry Potter book (part of a Swantko sale of literature) sold for $1,920,000.
