Highlights

August Pollak (1838-1903) A wonderful painting of an "Oriental Woman”, in the guise of Cleopatra wearing the goddess Neckhbet (Vulture) head-dress with a suggestion of a cobra at the brow.  Fine gold earrings and a beautiful necklace adorn her, with the sensuous somewhat fragile beauty of the imagined Cleopatra. Pollack was an Austrian artist, many of his paintings are of still lives, sensuous women or whimsical studies of children with cats, he is known for his oriental subjects. His paintings have about them a Fusilian mystery. The painting could be a study for a larger work.

Untitled (AUSTRALIA) 1697 VINCENZO CORONELLI (Venice 1650-1718) COPPER ENGRAVING Coronelli’s rare gore showing the north eastern coast of Australia, the southern portion of Tasmania and New Guinea. One of the three Coronelli’s gores covering up the Australian continent in his massive world globe. Cartography is based on the earlier discoveries made by Tasman and the others Dutch navigators up 1644. From “Libro dei Globi” published in Venice, 1697. Excellent impression printed on strong Venetian laid paper with watermark: “Three Half Moons”; Mounted. In excellent condition.

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. London: Oxford University Press, 1976. First Edition. 8vo. original black boards in dustwrapper; pp. xii, 224. A fine copy. In July 2017, the book was listed as the most influential science book of all time in a poll to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Royal Society science book prize, ahead of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of SpeciesIsaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica.

Sparkling illuminations, fine condition. Book of Hours leaf, c.1490, France. Revered Psalm: “De Profundis”

Possibly the only First Fleet letter still remaining in private hands. An extraordinary foundation item for British settlement in Australia.

A complete set of the foundational fetish magazine of the 20th century that has its artistic roots in Australia.

19th century family bible published circa 1884. Impressively bound in boards that are heavily embossed with gilt. With colour chromo-lithographic plates, maps, steel engravings and text-illustrations. A fine example.

Liste des Grands Vins Fins. A set of thirty-seven extravagantly produced annual fine wine commercial catalogues issued by the Parisian wine merchant Établissements Nicolas Maison between 1929 and 1973, together with associated tariff cards, advertising cards and ephemera, and Carte Fines Bouteilles commercial catalogues issued for the years 1993-1997.

Subtitled: "The Nice & Accurate Prophecies Of Agnes Nutter, Witch". First Printing [Victor Gollancz, London, 1990]; red boards, black titling to spine, a couple of spots on foredge, slightly canted, torn with 2cm loss to top corner of title page where [presumably] production flaw glued prelims together, an excellent copy; in like, unclipped [£12.95] dustjacket, a couple tiny nicks in extremities. A scarce First Edition of one of modern fantasy’s best-loved books.

An American second mate's eyewitness account, embellished with his illustrations, of China in the wake of the First Opium War. Venturing east on a Jardine, Matheson specie and opium runner, he becomes an old China hand and an astute observer, writing of early colonial Hong Kong and Shanghai, trade arrangements, and the sights and sounds of the coast.

London, Edward Stanford, 1879. Octavo, mounted photographic frontispiece 'Trout Pond at Ercildoune', folding map, index, very good in bright original decorated terracotta cloth, lettered in gilt, vignette of a salmon in silver on front board, lemon china clay endpapers, small lozenge binder's ticket on rear pastedown. 'Third Edition', preceded by a paper in the Zoological and Acclimatization Society of Victoria's 1878 annual report and reprinted by Sands & McDougall, as THE CALIFORNIAN SALMON, in the same year. Author’s presentation copy.

[Clark, John Heaviside] FIELD SPORTS, &c. &c. Of the Native Inhabitants of New South Wales; with ten plates, by the Author. Pp. [20](including index to Foreign Field Sports), plus 10 hand-coloured aquatint plates. Edward Orme, London, 1813[1814?]. First edition. *'The first Australian coloured plate book properly so-called [and] . . . the first separate account of the Aborigines' [Wantrup page 282]. This is the New South Wales supplement to Foreign Field Sports, Fisheries, Sporting Anecdotes &c. &c., also issued as a separate 18 page publication, in wrappers. $7000.00