“La Vente des Diamants de la Couronne,” Arthur Bloche, Paris, 1888, $16,100.
“The Book of the Pearl,” George Frederick Kunz, New York, 1908, inscribed and signed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, $12,650.
NEW YORK CITY – A first edition of Arthur Bloche’s La Vente des Diamants de la Couronne, Paris, 1888, the rarest work about the sale of the French Crown Jewels following the French Revolution, which identifies both the purchasers and the prices they paid, soared to a record auction price of $16,100 at Swann Galleries’ auction of books on gems and jewelry from The Henry Polissack Library on Thursday, March 20.
Other record breaking rarities included a presentation copy of George Frederick Kunz’s The Book of the Pearl, first edition, New York, 1908, inscribed and signed to Louis Comfort Tiffany, $12,650; and the Catalogue of the Collection of Jewels and Precious Works of Art, the Property of J. Pierpont Morgan, London, 1910, $8,050.
The breadth and scope of the sale was evident in such examples as Abraham Gorlaeus’s classic Dactyliotheca Seu Annulorum Sigillarium quorum apud Priscos tam Graecos Quam Romanos usus, first edition, Delft, 1601, $3,910; Anselmus Boethius de Boodt’s Gemmarum et lapidum historia, first edition, Hanau, 1609, the first major treatise on gems and gem cutting, $7,475; and Joannon de Saint-Laurent’s Description et Explication d’une Camée deLapis-Lazuli fait…par Mr Louis Siries, first and only edition of this important volume on precious gems, including the production of false rubies, Florence, 1747, $3,795.
Also of special note were Laurentius Natter’s Treatise on the Ancient Method of Engraving on Precious Stones, Compared with the Modern, London, 1754, a scarce first English language edition of the first technical manual, $3,680; Jean Henri Prosper Pouget’s Traité des Pierre Précieuses et de la maniere de les employer en Parure, Paris, 1762, an important work on jewelry, $5,750; and Aleksandr Evgenevich Fersman’sDragotsennye I Tsvetnye Kamni Rossii (Precious and Colored Stones of Russia), Petrograd, 1920 [i.e.1922]-Leningrad, 1925, a first edition of the monumental work on the gemstones of Russia by the eminent Russian geologist-mineralogist, a record $5,060.
Books outlining the mystical, occult, curative and spiritual properties that have been attributed to gems over the years were also offered: Speculum lapidum (The Mirror of Stones), second edition, Venice, 1516, by Camillus Leonardus, an early book that devotes about a third of its pages to astrological and magical images carved on gems, sold for $16,100; and Marbode, the Bishop of Rennes’s De gemmarum lapidum,Cologne, 1539, the earliest didactic poem since the classical era, which describes some 60 gemstones and their magical and medicinal virtues ,brought $5,290.
Finally, among the rare books on travel and exploration was Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s The Six Voyages… through Turky into Persia,and the East-Indies, first edition in English, London, 1678, one of the most important Seventeenth Century European accounts of travel in the Middle East and Asia, which was written by a Parisian jeweler who was one of the first Euro-peans to visit the diamond mines of India, $5,980.
Two other noteworthy books by French jewelers were Pierre de Rosnel’s Le MercureIndien, second edition, Paris, 1672, one of the best manuals of the gold and silversmith’s trade, bound with Robert de Berquen’s Les Merveilles des Indes Orietales et Occidentales, first edition, Paris, 1661, an important treatise on gems, pearls and precious metals of the East and West Indies, $11,500.
All prices quoted above include buyer’s premium.
