Archive: Business & Technology

National Book Auctions hosted a Sunday, January 8th auction featuring a broad range of rare antique and vintage books, as well as a fine collection of deluxe, limited bindings and an array of ephemera.

One of the highlights of this auction was a substantial collection of printings by The Limited Editions Club, Easton Press and The Franklin Library including hundreds of signed first editions and signed limited editions, most of which are housed in handsome, deluxe leather bindings. This 484-lot auction also featured several important modern first editions, a great quantity of author-signed titles by prominent writers, and ephemera such as antique postcards, photographs, and travel-related material.

An 1842 printing of Jeremiah Greenleaf’s “A New Universal Atlas” fetched a hammer price of $3,567.00 (including buyer’s premium). Jeremiah Greenleaf was a little-known but highly admired American cartographer of the early 19th century. Greenleaf’s maps are extremely rare and admired for their stunningly vivid pastel color.


Realizing a hammer price of $2,280.00 (including buyer’s premium) was another antique landmark atlas by the same name, Samuel Augustus Mitchell’s “A New Universal Atlas.” This scarce edition is beautifully illustrated with a hand-colored title page engraving depicting the first landing of Columbus, and contains 73 numbered hand-colored lithographed maps.

Paulinus da San Bartholomaeo’s “Orientalist Compilation” brought a hammer price of $1,599.00 (including buyer’s premium). This first edition compilation contains seminal works on Sanskrit and Indian culture. The author, also known as Philip Werdin (or Wesdin) was an Austrian Carmelite missionary in Malabar from 1776 to 1789. An outstanding Orientalist, he was one of the first to remark upon the close relationship between Indian and European languages.

Bringing a hammer price of $1,230.00 (including buyer’s premium) was an antique volume containing a Latin-language collection of the works of the Roman playwright Plautus. This volume was published in 1511 by Johannes Grüninger.

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