News & Views

NEWS & VIEWS

Below: Peter Harrington’s £130,000 Frankenstein; right, avid – and wealthy – bibliophile Harlan Crow owns the world’s largest collection of dictator ‘busts’; bottom: Quaritch’s leaf from the Gutenberg bible

BIG HITTERS IN THE BIG APPLE The giants of the rare book world make 2006’s New York fair one to remember,says JM

Three copies of the Columbus Epistola($950,000-$1,500,000); five copies of Hamilton’s Campi Phlegraei ($110,000-$170,000); two first editions of Frankenstein(£130,000, Peter Harrington in a binding from a gothic German schloss, nearly twice that for a copy in original boards with American trade); a superb one of 100 of Ulysses, fresh as issued with only two private owners since publication; an exceptional Walter Raleigh letter; an inscribed Dracula; and, the star of the show, an inscribed presentation copy of Pascal, from Dr Johnson to Boswell (Ursus Books, POR and, I believe, sold); it just has to be the New York Book Fair, confirming itself to be without doubt the best book fair with the finest books in the world. Of course book fairs need customers as well as stock, and here too New York is unparalleled; one of the first through the door was Texas real estate magnate, Harlan Crow, the world’s leading collector of statues of dictators, past and present, displayed in his garden of sculpture in Dallas. It seems he also collects Americana in a big way, and accompanied by his librarian and his dealer, Steve Weissman, made a few dealers very happy. In fact a notable feature of the New York fair is how many of the leading US dealers wheel their major customers around the floor, and these latter day Medici princes dispense or withhold their largesse on their say so. It makes for great theatre and as several of these mega-collectors are capable of spending multi-million sums, it also makes for great business at the top end of the market. Whether

there is any trickle-down effect is open to question, however, and what I see is a split opening in the trade between those catering for the big spenders, and the rest. Certainly what sells is major fresh stock; back catalogue material is slow and there is definitely a feeling that with the web your wares have been seen, judged and found wanting, without you even knowing it. My most esteemed colleague, Bernard Shapero, has always been a firm believer in the ‘grass is always greener’ theory, and he had this proved to him in spades. Sharing an open-plan booth arrangement with James Cummins, and being across the aisle from Bill Reese, he was able to witness both of them selling relentlessly through the show, with Cummins even moving a pair of toy bears on wheels for several thousand dollars (seemingly they were related to Pierpoint Morgan). The most intriguing item I saw was in Bernard Quaritch’s booth, a leaf from the Gutenburg bible recovered from binder’s waste. How many other such leaves will come to light, only time will tell, but it conjures up the image of Nicholas Poole-Wilson slitting open renaissance bindings in the hope of making up a pair. When Jim Cummins left the fair on the Saturday, he said that he wouldn’t be back the following day as he had sold enough; Bernard also left on the Saturday but I don’t recall his parting words being quite the same. All this makes me very happy that the ILAB fair will be in New York in September, although whether the Javitz Center pulls in the same sort of crowd is the big question.

RAREBOOK REVI EW 9