Rare Book Monthly

Articles - April - 2018 Issue

Strength at the New York Shows

Book Fairs:  safe harbors for intellectuals.  Image by Abby Schoolman Books

Book Fairs: safe harbors for intellectuals. Image by Abby Schoolman Books

The New York Antiquarian Book Fairs have come and gone, delivering large crowds and excellent results to the more than three hundred exhibitors who participated in at least one of the three fairs:

 

The 58th Annual New York International Antiquarian Book Fair, the New York City Book and Ephemera Fair, and the Manhattan Vintage Book & Ephemera Fair.

 

The 58th at the Armory was 4 days, the other two both Saturday events.

 

The crowds were robust, the buying mood strong.  These fairs are too often pawns to the weather, economy and political environment but they escaped this year, the occasional cloudy sky.

 

Taken together, they continued New York’s uninterrupted annual reaffirmation of books, manuscripts, maps and ephemera as a primary collecting area.  To those in the field this is not news but to the newbies and tire kickers deciding if and what to collect this all adds up to healthy signals.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USD
    Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR

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