Wonderful pages of art, history and science open the second semester of enchantments at Il Ponte with the auction of Antique Books and Livres d’Artistes on September 24 and 25, 2024. The catalogue confirmed the collector's interest, totalizing €650,000 in sales, 90% sell-through rate and 136% increase on starting prices.
Among the top lots was Sir William Hamilton's masterpiece, which sold for €81,900: a monumental work on geophysics and volcanology realized in 1779 in three volumes with Pietro Fabris, embellished with 59 plates depicting volcanic activity in Naples and Sicily.
The sale was also enlivened by other illustrated treasures, such as the rare vintage mountaineering volume by Désiré-Raoul Rochette, "Voyage pittoresque dans la Vallée de Chamonix et autour de Mont Blanc," presented in its first edition of 1826 (€25,200). The extraordinary collection of more than 14,000 ex libris, made between the 17th and 20th centuries, originally used to mark books and now considered as objects of art and collector’s items, achieved a remarkable result (€25,200).
Noteworthy sales include Vitruvio's "De architectura libri dece," printed in 1521 (€25,200), a copy of Johannes Hevelius's famous work on comets published in 1668 (€25,200), George Edwards's "Gleanings of Natural History" study published between 1758 and 1764 (€11,340), and the first and only edition of Edmund Thomas Coleman's "Scenes from the Snow-Fields," published in London in 1859 (€11,340).
The section dedicated to Livres d'Artistes is particularly significant, a sign of an increasingly established trend and a lively demand from enthusiasts. Highlights included Frantisek Kupka's "Quatre histoires de blanc et noir," published in Paris in 1926 (€21,420) and the perfect condition, numbered 190/200 copy of Marc Chagall's 1968 "Poèmes," accompanied by 24 magnificent plates (€17,640).
