Highlights
Each year our exhibitors bring rare, beautiful and unusual items for sale.
Here are just a few of the exhibitors' highlights that were at the Fair in 2023!
There are a number of pages of highlights. To browse all the highlights - choose a page from the list below.
You can also check the highlights listed under your favourite booksellers in the exhibitor directory.
Although the 2023 Fair has now closed, some of these items may still be available from our Exhibitors if you wish to contact them.
[SIGNED BY CHIVERS] "Days and Hours in a Garden" by Eleanor Vere Boyle
$5000
Superb example of a vellucent binding. Cedric Chivers (1853 -1929) of Bath revived the technique of painting under vellum and it is rare to find such a finely preserved example of his work.
In 'Days and Hours in a Garden', 19th century Scottish artist and writer, Eleanor Vere Boyle (1825 -1916) takes us through the months of the year, the cherry blossoms, the rooks, the wild ivy etc. etc., reminiscent of a modest walled-garden 'Walden' by Thoreau.
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Sappho
$180
Copper-line engraving by Carlo Gregori after Giovanni Domenico Campiglia. 1741. 255mm by 180mm (platemark) 420mm by 270mm (sheet).
Illustration of an Ancient Roman marble bust from 'Musei Capitolini', a series of engravings showing the sculpture of the Capitoline Museum in Rome.
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[SIGNED] COCTEAU, Jean; PICASSO, Pablo; WILDMAN, Carl (Trans.) Orpheé; A Tragedy in one Act and an Interval
$2500
London: Oxford University Press, 1933. Pablo Picasso. First English Language Edition. Original cloth. Hardcover : pp. [vi] xi, 43 [1] : frontis by Picasso : photo of Cocteau as Heurtebise : printed on Basingwerk paper : SIGNED by both Cocteau and Picasso at colophon (p.iv), Cocteau has added his signature star : fore-edge untrimmed : black cloth boards lettered in gilt on top board : custom clamshell box in black cloth littered in gilt.
Cloth is chipped to all edges and split 9cm from crown of top joint; some light foxing. Item #3927
No. 23 of 100.
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Peter Trusler Yellow-bellied Sunbirds Nesting under a Queenslander, Watercolour, 26.5 x 18 cm
$8500
Peter Trusler's paintings for the book Birds of Australian Gardens (Rigby, 1980), are revolutionary, and rank among the finest Australian natural history paintings ever done.
In his Artist's Note (page 11) Peter says; 'Where possible I prefer to work from life. A number of the paintings are portraits of individual birds and all of the backgrounds and plants have been painted from actual specimens ... The paintings for the plates were executed with transparent watercolour and gouache.
Item #6569
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Forty-six fine watercolours by Francesco Novelli elegantly bound in a nineteenth-century album.
$55000
An exquisite suite of watercolours, including a beautiful series of scenes documenting a Venetian commedia dell'arte troupe, by the Italian artist Francesco Novelli. Francesco Novelli (1767-1836), one of the preeminent artists of his generation, lived in Venice where he was best known for his outstanding book illustration. He enjoyed a long and successful career that culminated in the landmark editions of Don Quixote (1819) and Gil Blas (1820). Novelli is also known for illustrating works such as the Fasti Veneziani (1794), hinting at his abiding interest in the theatre and performing arts.
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Zoological sketches.Made for the Zoological society of London, from animals in their vivarium, in the Regent’s park.
$48500
London : Henry Graves and Company, Printsellers to Her Majesty, 1861 [actually 1856] - 67. Two volumes with 100 fine lithographed plates by Joseph Wolf. Zoological sketches is unequivocally one of the high points of nineteenth-century natural history illustration. The work features numerous Australian birds and animals. "WITHOUT EXCEPTION, THE BEST ALL-ROUND ANIMAL PAINTER THAT EVER LIVED" (Sir Edwin Landseer).
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Potter, Beatrix, & others: CHANGING PICTURES: A Book of Transformation Pictures.
$1500
Potter, Beatrix, & others: CHANGING PICTURES: A Book of Transformation Pictures. Ernest Nister, London and E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, n.d.[1893]. First edition. One of three coloured illustrations on the upper board is an early (unattributed) picture by Beatrix Potter, of a rabbit opening a door to discover a Christmas basket of carrots and other vegetables. $1500
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