Highlights

Each year our exhibitors bring extraordinarily rare, beautiful and unusual items for sale.
Here is a selection of the items offered in 2025 by our exhibitors. These may still be available for purchase. If interested, contact the respective exhibitor directlyCloser to the 2026 Fair, new highlights of what will be on offer in 2026 will be posted. Bookmark this page and visit again to see the 2026 highlights.
Charles Troedel. The Melbourne Album, containing a Series of Views of Melbourne & Country Districts.
$12000
Oblong folio, lithographed titling-wrapper on cream paper, bound in as title-page as issued, twelve fine tinted lithographed plates,
Very rare: one of the short sets of twelve elegant tinted lithographs that make up Troedel's Melbourne Album of 1863-4, "perhaps the finest work of urban topography produced in Australia in the nineteenth century" (Wantrup). Notable contemporary artists including Nicholas Chevalier, Eugen von Guerard, Edward Gilks and Henry Gritten contributed to the Album.
雙六式國史早わかり. [Sugoroku - Quick View of Japan's History].
$650
Large colour folding sugoroku game, 93 x 125cm.
This unique and visually rich sugoroku-style educational chart was published in 1927 in Shizuoka by Yamamura Azusa. Intending to present Japanese history through the lens of the imperial lineage, Yamamura sought to make the subject accessible and engaging for children by structuring it as a game. Using the familiar sugoroku board format, he transforms historical chronology into a path of progress, starting with the mythological creation of Japan by the sun goddess Amaterasu at the centre of the chart.
View More
Dobbson's first book restricted to 200 copies and published when she was only 17.
$500
Rosemary Dobson.
Poems.
[Mittagong, NSW]: Frensham Press, 1937. First Edition. Paper boards with black and white lino cut designed by Rosemary Dobson with her monogrammed initials : red paper label lettered in black : black cloth spine.
The Press was established by the Australian children's author Joan Phipson after she visited some private presses in England and consulted Leonard and Virginia Woolf at their Hogarth Press. Leonard Woolf was later to praise Dobson's book as equal to any of the initial efforts by the Hogarth Press.
View More
16回オリンピックメルボルン大会. [Japanese Newspaper Scrap Book on Melbourne Olympics in 1956].
$550
Scrapbook assembled by S. Tanaka in December 1965, 26 x 36.3cm, [38]pp, 4 hole string binding, hand-written title on front cover. This Japanese scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings from Japanese sources provides a detailed and engaging record of the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, capturing the entire event from its earliest stages to its conclusion. The scrapbook begins with profiles of all Japanese athletes participating in the Games, followed by reports on the opening ceremony, individual sporting events, and the triumphs and disappointments experienced by Japan's competitors.
View More
First World War recruitment leaflet distributed by aeroplane
$550
'If YOU were Hit by a Bomb from an Enemy Aeroplane you would Realise that we are at War!'
Adelaide, printed by 'Advertiser' Print for J. Newland, State Recruiting Committee, 27 October 1917.
Robert Graham Carey, manager of the Ballarat Flying School, dropped this leaflet over Adelaide from his 60hp Bleriot monoplane in October 1917.
John Harris, Navigantium atque itinerantium bibliotheca: or, A Complete Collection of Voyages and Travels. Consisting of above six hundred of the most authentic writers.
$17000
London, T. Woodward, et al., 1744 - 1748. Two volumes, thick folio, titles in black & red, complete with 61 maps, charts, and plates.
The second edition of Harris's great collection of travels, preferred for its new maps prepared by Emmanuel Bowen. The most notable is Bowen's version of the Thévenot Tasman map, "A Complete Map of the Southern Continent surveyed by Capt. Abel Tasman". This is the first English map of Australia (and the first map of Australia since Thévenot in 1663).
Self Portrait
$270
Series of Friedlander's self-portraits taken over the course of six decades.
View More
Ah! Nana
$1200
Complete set of the French women’s comic magazine. Ah!Nana ran for nine issues, each with its own theme, coming to a short end following the magazine being banned to minors after the publication of the eighth issue devoted to homosexuality. This led the editorial team to go all in on the ninth and final issue, devoting it to incest, leading to the French censorship Commission banning the publication, labelling it pornographic.
View More
The Beatles: A rare signed „Pixerama“ Foldbook.
$44700
The first four black and white portraits autographed individually in blue ballpoint by John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and George Harrison; together with a concert programme, The Beatles Show, white covers with orange/black text.
View More
GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI, "VEDUTA DI PIAZZA NAVONA SOPRA LE ROVINE DEL CIRCO AGONALE", from "VEDUTE DI ROMA".
$6800
GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI
(Mogliano Veneto 1720-Roma 1778)
"VEDUTA DI PIAZZA NAVONA SOPRA LE ROVINE DEL CIRCO AGONALE"
[THE PIAZZA NAVONA WITH S. AGNESE ON THE RIGHT]
1751
Etching
DESCRIPTION:
Original etching from the series "Vedute di Roma".
"Veduta di Piazza Navona sopra le rovine del Circo Agonale" with Santa Agnese church at right.
Piranesi first general depiction of one of the most emblematic corners of Rome, Piazza Navona, built on the ruins of the ancient Circus of Domitian (or Circus Agonale).NOTE:
Life-time Rome edition on thick laid paper, fourth state of six, with address..
View More
Grecian and Chinese Architecture Hardy Wilson
$900
Grecian & Chinese Architecture
By Hardy Wilson. 1937
No.93 of 100 copies.
50 tipped-in plates
Hobart Town
$2450
Rare c.19th detailed hand coloured engraved panorama of Hobart published in 1879. From the original edition of the Australasian Sketcher.
View More
[Meiji Period Japanese Moveable Type].
$3500
411 examples of Japanese wooden moveable type. The moveable type include kanji, hiragana, katakana and numbers both Japanese and Arabic. The pieces of wooden type shows some signs of use but overall a very good collection.
View More
齊白石畫集. [Collection of 22 Watercolours].
$1950
Biography of Qi Baishi (in Chinese) + 22 colour woodblock prints with manuscript titles and red artist's chop, 31.5 x 22.5 cms, traditional Chinese leporello/concertina binding, floral silk brocade boards with silk ties. A fine compilation of woodblock prints: flowers and animals, by the renowned artist Qi Baishi (1864-1957).
View More
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
$5500
First edition of the highly influential autobiographical account of De Quincey’s laudanum addiction. The foundation work of drug literature.
View More
GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI, "VEDUTA DEL ROMANO CAMPIDOGLIO CON SCALINATA CHE VA ALLA CHIESA D'ARACELI". From "Vedute di Roma".
$2750
GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI
(Mogliano Veneto 1720-Roma 1778)
Italian school
"VEDUTA DEL ROMANO CAMPIDOGLIO CON SCALINATA CHE VA ALLA CHIESA D'ARACELI"
[THE CAPITOL AND THE STEPS OF S. MARIA IN ARACOELI]
1757
Etching
DESCRIPTION:
Original etching from the "Vedute di Roma".
"Veduta del romano Campidoglio con Scalinata che va alla che va alla Chiesa d'Araceli".
In this etching Piranesi captures with great power and theatricality one of the emblematic places of Rome: the Capitol, with its famous staircase.
NOTE: Unidentified watermark. Hind 38, ii-iii/v.
View More
Globe terrestre
$45000
Paris : L. C. Desnos & J. B. Nolin, 1760. A large and highly decorative French table globe from the mid-eighteenth century, rich in geographical detail that includes the voyages and discoveries of French, English, Dutch and Russian explorers.
Provenance :
Jean R. Perrette, New York based French businessman and collector, his bookplate pasted under the base of the globe.
View More
Wind in the Willows | Kenneth Grahame | 1908 (First UK Edition)
$5160
1908 (First UK Edition) The first US edition is technically four days earlier and even the second UK edition was printed in the same month and year, too, but this example is the more recognised (and now increasingly rare) UK first edition, so sought after worldwide. No explanation is necessary about the beloved characters Mole, Toad, Ratty and Badger, remembering that it was not until 23 years later that Ernest Shepard did the first illustrations of these characters.
View More
Salvador Dali, Hidden Faces
$150
1st thus, revised translation, 1973. London: Peter Owen.
8vo. Original black boards gilt in dustjacket; pp. i-xiv, 15-320 (last blank), with illustrations by the author. A near fine copy.
The famous surrealist artist’s only novel, written in 1944, describing the intrigues of a group of eccentric aristocrats whose extravagant lifestyle symbolises the decadence of the 1930s
The Birds of Australia
$750000
London : printed by Richard and John Taylor for the author, 1848.
The first comprehensive survey of the birds of Australia, with hand-coloured illustrations and descriptions of 681 species, 328 of which were new to Western science and which Gould was the first to describe.
The finest of all Australian colour plate books, and Gould’s ‘greatest achievement’ (Wantrup).
Provenance:
Sir Edward Charles Stirling (1848-1919), Director of the South Australian Museum 1895 - 1913
View More
The Waves [1931]; To The Lighthouse [1927]
Two uniformly bound copies of key works by Virginia Woolf. Our copy of The Waves is the 1931 First Edition and To The Lighthouse is the Secend Impression, published in June 1927 [the month following the first printing].
View More
An Austen family copy of the first edition in beautiful Regency binding. AUSTEN (Jane). Emma.
$100000
First edition. Three volumes. 12mo. Contemporary tree calf, single-rule gilt border, flat spines elaborately panelled in gilt. London, John Murray. 1816.
From the library of Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen (1829-1893), Jane Austen’s grand-nephew. It is uncommon to find Jane Austen titles in contemporary bindings and even more so with such intimate provenance.