Bound by ‘The Morocco Binder’, an otherwise unidentified craftsman but one with an impressive client list, this 1567 volume from the Glyn Cywarch sale at Bonhams made £14,000.
With every one of the 531 lots sold, from an oak gateleg table that opened proceedings to a 1925 Douglas motorcycle, the March 29 Bonhams (25/20/15% buyer’s premium) sale of contents from Glyn Cywarch, a Welsh home of the Lords Harlech, was one of those ‘white-glove’ sales in which auction rooms take such pride.
The £80,000 sale of an archive of papers and correspondence of David Ormsby Gore, 5th Lord Harlech, who had hoped to marry the widowed Jacqueline Kennedy, was one of the more instantly newsworthy items. However, it preceded the dispersal of an impressive selection of 200 lots from the library, The emphasis was very much on early printed books, among them two rare Elizabethan satires, John Marston’s The Scourge of Villanie and Samuel Rowland’s The Letting of Humours Blood in the Head-vaine…, which made £12,000 (see antiquestradegazette.com for more).