• 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
  • 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.
  • 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€

Rare Book Monthly

Articles - August - 2006 Issue

An Upstate New York Perspective

History is alive in the eye of the painter.

History is alive in the eye of the painter.


We drive over to Dove & Hudson, a second hand bookseller. Dan Wedge, the owner, is helpful but doesn't handle older material. He explains that he sells used books -- often to college students but offers useful advice on who to contact for old and rare material. Unfortunately most dealers are closed on Saturdays. We decide to drive to Troy and find in the "antique district" a few shops, a bookstore, two or three art galleries and the Illium Cafe which serves a nice lunch. It's only 3:00 pm so we head north on 87 to Saratoga Springs to visit Lyrical Ballad Bookstore at 7 Phila Street. I've bought from them on the internet and found them firm about prices. I expect this to be a brief visit and am soon proven wrong. They have a very good eye for stock and the inventory is deep. You can not always tell what condition standards are for a seller and it's quickly apparent here they're high. I look through their New York inventory and ask about Munsell. They direct me to a second set of shelves and in time to a third. Someone has been through the early Munsell pamphlets because there aren't any. Nevertheless they have some rare and unusual material that is reasonable: a pre-Munsell 1844-5 Albany directory in superb condition and an 1851 Munsell printing of a library catalogue with no identifiable connection to Munsell but which I remember as one of his printings. I borrow the house copy of Munselliana to confirm and bingo -- we have a match. I'm very happy to find an example of an unmarked Munsell imprint. This will be useful for identifying similar printings.

The owners John and Janice DeMarco are very nice. They can't get many requests for Munsell but they know exactly where such material is. They have about 75,000 items in open stock and a great sense of organization. The next wave of inventory waits in the back for space on the retail floor. In a separate warehouse new arrivals receive pre-induction physicals. The material is well chosen. This is an exciting find, the kind of bookstore that changes the direction of weekend jaunts.

At 6:30 we're having dinner with the Lenny Tantillo and his wife Corliss, both high school classmates of mine at New Paltz in the 1960s. Lenny is today a leading American painter of historical and marine scenes and focuses on Albany and the Hudson River. His gallery on Broadway in Albany is a step back in time. Lenny and I were neighbors in the early 1950s, both residents of Ohioville, a tiny footnote on only the most detailed local maps and the potential answer to the million dollar question on Do you want to be a millionaire? The question: Where did the artist Lenny Tantillo grow up? For a few minutes we sit outside the hotel continuing to talk. We have compressed forty years into a few hours and part company at midnight.

On Sunday we return to San Francisco refreshed and aware the book business is in transition but that some dealers are riding the big waves off Maui. No dealer we spoke to had more than a third of their stock on line and the average is 25%. In total they have 570,000 items for sale and a large but indeterminate quantity of additional material that will be put out for sale over the next 2 to 3 years. For collectors this suggests that visiting dealers can be very worthwhile. The net gives the impression almost everything is on line. This trip and my visit with Ohio dealers two months ago confirm this is not the case.

Links and Contacts

Old Editions Book Shop
74 East Huron St.
Buffalo, NY 14203
Tel: (716) 842-1734
Fax: (716) 332-6949
Email: service@oldedition.com
Internet: www.oldedition.com

Rockland Bookman
P.O. Box 429
Orchard Park, NY 14127
Tel: (716) 662-2082
Email: tomcat@adelphia.net

Willis Monie Books
139 Main St.
Cooperstown, NY 13326
Tel: (607) 547-8363, (800) 322-2995
Fax: (607) 547-7128
Email: wilmonie@wpe.com
Internet: www.wilmonie.com

American Antiquarian Society
185 Salisbury Street
Worcester, Massachusetts 01609-1634
Tel: 508-755-5221
Fax: 508-753-3311
Internet: www.americanantiquarian.org

Lyrical Ballad Bookstore
7 Phila St.
Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
Tel: (518) 584-8779
Fax: (518) 584-6815
Email: lballad@nycap.rr.com

Leonard F. Tantillo
488 Broadway
Albany, New York
Tel: (518) 689-1212
E-mail: cooperkeel@aol.com
Internet: www.lftantillo.com

Rare Book Monthly

  • Finarte, Nov 20-21: Alighieri, Dante - La Commedia, [col commento di Jacopo della Lana e Martino Paolo Nidobeato, curata da Martino Paolo Nidobeato e Guido da Terzago. Aggiunto Il Credo], 1478
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Alighieri, Dante - La Commedia [Commento di Christophorus Landinus, edita da Piero da Figino. Aggiunte le Rime diverse; Marsilius Ficinius, Ad Dantem gratulatio], 1491
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Lactantius, Lucius Coelius Firmianus - Opera, 1465
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Alighieri, Dante - Le terze rime di Dante, 1502
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Boccaccio, Giovanni - Il Decamerone. Di messer Giouanni Boccaccio, 1516
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Giordano Bruno - Candelaio comedia del Bruno nolano achademico di nulla achademia; detto il fastidito. In tristitia hilaris: in hilaritate tristis, 1582
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Petrarca, Francesco - Le cose volgari di Messer Francesco Petrarcha, 1504
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Legatura - Manoscritto - Medici - Cosimo III de' Medici / Solari, Giuseppe - I Ritratti Medicei overo Glorie e Grandezze della sempre sereniss. Casa Medici..., 1678
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Alighieri, Dante - La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri con varie annotazioni, e copiosi Rami adornata, 1757
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Lot containing 80 printed guides and publications dedicated to travel and itineraries in Italy
  • 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.
  • Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 37: Archive of the pioneering woman artist Arrah Lee Gaul, most 1911-59. $3,000 to $4,000.
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 66: Letter describing the dropping water level at Owens Lake near Death Valley, long before it was drained, Keeler, CA, 26 July 1904. $3,000 to $4,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 102: To Horse, To Horse! My All for a Horse! The Washington Cavalry, illustrated Civil War broadside, Philadelphia, 1862. $4,000 to $6,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 135: Album of cyanotype views of the Florida panhandle and beyond, 224 photographs, 174 of them cyanotypes, Apalachicola, FL and elsewhere, circa 1895-1896. $1,200 to $1,800
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 154: Catalogue of the Library of the United States, as acquired from Thomas Jefferson, Washington, 1815. $15,000 to $25,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 173: New Englands First Fruits, featuring the first description of Harvard in print, London, 1643. $40,000 to $60,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 177: John P. Greene, Original manuscript diary of a mission to western New York with Joseph Smith, 1833. $60,000 to $90,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 243: P.E. Larson, photographer, Such is Life in the Far West: Early Morning Call in a Gambling Hall, Goldfield, NV, circa 1906. $2,500 to $3,500
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 261: Fred W. Sladen, Diaries of a WWII colonel commanding troops from Morocco to Italy to France, 1942-44. $3,000 to $4,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 309: Los mexicanos pintados por si mismos, por varios autores, a Mexican plate book. Mexico, 1854-1855. $2,000 to $3,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 8: Diaries of a prospector / trapper in the remote Alaska wilderness, 5 manuscript volumes. Alaska, 1917-64. $1,500 to $2,500.

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