Travel, Photographs, Maps and Natural History
Online Auction: 9–17 November 2021 • 2:00 PM GMT • London

Travel, Photographs, Maps and Natural History 9–17 November 2021 • 2:00 PM GMT • London

W e are delighted to present the November edition of our twice-yearly sale of beautifully illustrated works of natural history, maps, atlases, topographical photographs and fine colour-plate books.

Lot Categories

Leading the sale is the Alwan collection: a monumental group of 5,000 photographs of Palestine, Turkey, the Middle East, and North Africa ranging from the 1860s to the early 1900s.

MIDDLE EAST PHOTOGRAPHY | THE MOHAMMED B. ALWAN COLLECTION OF PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE NEAR AND MIDDLE EAST, 1860S-1930S. ESTIMATE £300,000–400,000.

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Other photographic highlights include a set of Snouck Hurgronje’s two photobooks on Mecca and Medina, an album of early photographs of China from the 1860s, an album of Foochow (Fuzhou) from c. 1890, and a splendid series of 13 portfolios of photographs collected around 1890 of China, Hong Kong, Japan, Java, India, Siam, Ceylon, Aden, and North America. The sale also includes a rare copy of the Photographic Album for the year 1857, illustrated with salted paper and albumen print photographs by pioneering Photographic Club members, including Francis Bedford, Roger Fenton, John Dillwyn Llewelyn, Oscar Rejlander, and Benjamin Turner, and a significant collection of over 1,000 photographs of Palestine, Jerusalem and the Holy Land including a rare stereo viewer and stereoscopic views by Bonfils, Bassan and Frith.

Auction Highlights

Fine illustrated books include a rare hand-coloured copy of Davidov’s views in Greece and Ionian Islands (St Petersburg, 1839), a finely bound set of the monumental Description de l’ Égytpe, and a 3-volume set of William Pyne’s Royal Residences bound in red morocco. The sale also includes a set of 50 nineteenth-century watercolours of Egypt, Palestine, Turkey and Greece and a very large framed watercolour view of the Summer Palace in Beijing which was once owned by the traveller Robert Byron.

Cartographic highlights include atlases by Visscher, Pitt, Zatta and Coronelli, Blaeu’s Novum Italiae theatrum and individual maps by Ortelius, P.A.F. Tardieu and Seutter.

Natural history highlights include a collection of finely illustrated and bound ornithological books by Peter Scott and an attractive work by Sclater and Thomas.


Asia

Egypt

The Near and Middle East

The Americas

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