Highlights
Each year our exhibitors bring rare, beautiful and unusual items for sale.
As we have not had a fair since 2019 due to the pandemic, our booksellers have curated many lovely and desirable books to exhibit.
Here are just a few of the exhibitors' highlights you can expect to see at the Fair in 2022!
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
Ornithorhynque paradoxal (Platypus), engraving with original hand-colouring, after Edouard Travies, 1849
$140
From 'Dictionaire Universel d'Histoire Naturelle', a French natural history series reknown for the superb quality of the plates.
Edouard Travies is regarded as one of the great French natural history artists of the 19th century.
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Illustrated Letter of Honour and Farewell to Doctor Alex Lewers, Creswick 1898 by Percy Lindsay
$4500
Including four vignettes of local buildings
Watercolour and ink
57.2 x 45.7 cm
Signed also initialled and dated below each vignette and inscribed.
Alexander Lewers 1877-1922 born Creswick, worked and trained London and St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne
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A 14th century Ming Dynasty 1 kuan note : an example of the oldest extant paper currency
$16500
[China : c.1375]. Printed during the reign (1368-1398) of the first Ming emperor, Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang (Ming Taizu), a paper note with the original cash value of a string of 1,000 copper coins, or 1 kuan.
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Volcano with Blue Lake and Plains 1979 by Shay Docking
$8500
Volcanic landscape by this important artist, often featured in exhibitions in Public Galleries in Australia and New Zealand but still little known in her home state. Shay Docking (1928 - 1998) was born in Warrnambool and grew up at Tower Hill. Her views of Tower Hill are in the Warrnambool Gallery collection. This was from her Volcanic Plains Series 1979.
It is Pastel and acrylic on paper on board, 76.2 x 97.8 cm,
Signed. See recent article by Rhonda Dredge, Inner City News
A dramatic modernist with a fluid line https://www.innercitynews.com.au/a-dramatic-modernist-with-a-fluid-line
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ELIOT, George. Romola
$1200
Leipzig: BernhardTauchnitz, 1863. Copyright edition. vellum. Small octavo : two volumes bound in one : pp.vi + 328+ vi + 310 (2, blank) : bound in full vellum decorated in elaborate gilt : all edges gilt, concealing aFINE FORE EDGE PAINTING : foliate printed endpapers with label of G. Brogi on the verso of f.f.e.p. Title on top board slightly faded, some slight darkening to the vellum at edges and corner. Both volumes lack a half title page but conform to Todd and Bowden 682Aa and 683A in all other respects. In other words, a first Tauchnitz impression of this title. Near fine. Item #1558
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BLAKE, William; THORNTON, Robert John. The Pastorals of Virgil...
$55000
London: 1821. 2 vols., small octavo, xii (lacking vii/viii), 12, xxiv ( lacking i - iv), 214 pp; [I], [215]-592 pp. With an engraved frontispiece to each volume, and 230 illustrations including three maps (two folding), 17 woodcuts and 6 engraved plates by Blake, and four other designs by Blake engraved by others. Original sheep rebacked to style, in a quarter calf box (just starting to show wear at the corners). The first volume is very good internally though showing more age-toning and with just the occasional fox mark and offsetting from prints, the second volume is very good. Item #22
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Marcel Duchamp (Deluxe Edition of the Catalogue for the Exhibition at Ronny Van de Velde, Antwerpen, September 15 – December 15, 1991)
$1500
De luxe catalogue for an exhibition of over 400 works comprising a portfolio of works, photographs, an audio cassette of Duchamp speaking, and more, all housed in a wooden box, the top and bottom of which being reproductions of Duchamp’s ‘mental’ Chess Board.
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