Catalogues

Catalogue 82

Catalogue 82

The highlight of our latest catalogue would be a highlight wherever it appeared: a superlative copy of Duryea’s Adelaide Album (1866), featuring as its frontispiece a three-foot wide panorama of the fledgling city less than 30 years after its foundation. Contemporary advertisements indicate that apart from the panorama, these were bespoke albums – unique by design.

Other singular examples of photographica are a very rare stereo-daguerreotype by André Disderi of the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1855, and a collection of 65 snapshots taken by Captain Samuel White while on active service during the Boer War, before he achieved fame as an ornithologist and conservationist. There are also numerous books on international photographers, not least Nagano, Narahara, Inamura, Kawada, Holomicek, Meatyard and Serrano.

The large number of art books includes Die Buecher (1975), an early work on the Swiss artist Markus Raetz (1941-2020): it is signed, and contains an original signed woodcut. The two works by Garry Shead each contain an original signed ink drawing.

Australian botany is well represented, with works on plants of Capricornia, poisonous plants, grevilleas, dryandras and several others specific to the flora of Western Australia.

With over 200 items, there’s plenty more to choose from, so happy browsing!

Catalogue 81

Catalogue 81

Recent acquisitions and some unusual items unearthed as we continue to excavate our warehouse give the latest catalogue some of its strengths.

Not least, we have both the first and second editions of the superlative colour-plate book, Foreign Field Sports (1814 + 1813, and 1819), each one containing the Supplement of New South Wales, with 10 hand-coloured aquatints depicting various aspects of Indigenous life in the Port Jackson region. The 1813 first edition of the supplement is described by Jonathan Wantrup as ‘the very first book on the Australian Aborigines, a fact not often acknowledged’.

Our copy of the deluxe edition of Mortimer Menpes’s Durbar (1903) is not only signed and limited to 1000 copies – it is one of 100 copies containing an original signed watercolour by Menpes.

Two rare works on Singapore are Song Ong Siang’s One Hundred Years’ History of the Chinese in Singapore (1923), and Charles Burton Buckley’s An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore (1902, two volumes), the latter from the collection of Sir Ernest Woodford Birch, son of J.W.W. Birch, the first British Resident of Perak, assassinated there in 1875.

Any one of the 96 issues of the Peninsula Press, the Gallipoli field newsletter, is fiendishly rare: we have 13 of them, offered for sale separately.

The success of the Eiffel Tower at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1889 inspired the British to attempt to go one better. All that remains to show for it is the Descriptive Illustrated Catalogue of the Sixty-Eight Competitive Designs for the Great Tower for London (1890). This item won’t last long! And we also have the only other British publication that might upstage this one for outrageous/courageous eccentricity: the complete set of first editions of the published diaries of James Lees-Milne (1975 to 2005).

Happy browsing!

Melbourne Rare Book Fair 2024

Melbourne Rare Book Fair 2024

A complete list of our stock for the Melbourne Rare Book Fair 2024

Picture Book XI

Picture Book XI

Picture Book XI plays to our strengths, as ever – literature, art, manuscripts, photographs, militaria, exploration, maps – and there are many highlights.

Our set of The South Polar Times (1907-14, three volumes, two with dustwrappers) has the provenance of Elizabeth Dawson-Lambton (1837-1926), a significant benefactor of Ernest Shackleton and his expeditions. We also have the deluxe large-paper issue of Shackleton’s The Heart of the Antarctic (1909, three volumes), one of only 300 sets with the supplementary volume The Antarctic Book, signed by 16 members of the expedition.

Mawson’s The Home of the Blizzard (Philadelphia, 1915, two volumes, first edition, first state, with dustwrappers) is upstaged by our signed set of the London first edition, second state, purchased while the catalogue was being printed.

Maps include two adjoining gores from Coronelli's influential three-and-a-half-foot globe of the world, showing most of the continent of Australia, titled ‘Het Niew Hollandt | Nuova Hollanda’ (circa 1701). Stanford’s A Map of Australia (1879) is a fine, rare and impressive mammoth-format hand-coloured map on four sheets (approximately 1950 × 2620 mm when assembled) – even rarer and more impressive than Stanford's earlier Library Map of Australasia (1859).

Of the utmost significance is General Sir Harry Chauvel’s personal campaign map for the Battle of Beersheba (31 October 1917), with his annotations (‘better gallop into action’). He also features in the collection of photographs and ephemera relating to the war service of his younger brother Major James Chauvel. Another exceptional group of items is a presentation copy of Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash’s The Australian Victories in France in 1918 (1920), with a signed portrait photograph and a letter written not long before his death in 1931.

Catalogue 80

Catalogue 80

Our latest catalogue is larger than usual (well, it is the end of the financial year, after all!), so we won’t keep you waiting too long: Carron’s account of Kennedy's disastrous 1848 expedition to explore Cape York (1849); Hume’s A Brief Statement of Facts in Connexion with an Overland Expedition from Lake George to Port Phillip, in 1824 (1855); and Goyder’s impressive Plan of the Southern Portion of the Province of South Australia [1878] are rare and valuable. Equally rare but not nearly as costly are the dozen or more trade catalogues holding their own at the tail end – but there’s a lot of ground to cover before then.

Not least, this catalogue is accompanied by two supplementary lists, one on rare sporting ephemera (mainly Australian Rules football), the other on occult beliefs and practices. We are nothing if not eclectic …

Catalogue 79

Catalogue 79

Our latest catalogue contains a miscellany of books, photographs, autographs and manuscripts, and bookplates.

Botany is well represented, with the complete six-volume set of The Endemic Flora of Tasmania (1967-78), superbly illustrated by Margaret Stones; the Report on the Forest Resources of the Colony [of Western Australia] by Baron Ferdinand von Mueller (1879); and several books on Indigenous plant use.

Photography includes a signed copy of the first edition of David Goldblatt’s Some Afrikaners Photographed (1975), and Picasso, 1930-1935 (1936), an early monograph on Picasso, with a portrait illustration of Picasso signed on the mount by the photographer Man Ray. There are seven lots of stereographs, not least a group of 17 Australasian Stereo Views (circa 1892) by the little-known South Australian photographer Edwin C. Thomas. Other original photographs include aerial views of First World War trench warfare, early cartes de visite of Paris, an exhibition print by Charles Mountford of great Indigenous interest, and a signed portrait of Spencer Tracy.

We could go on, but why not just sit back, make yourself comfortable, and take it all in at your own pace!

Rock | Blues | Pop - Memorabilia Auction

Rock | Blues | Pop - Memorabilia Auction

Our forthcoming auction is something of a departure from our usual offerings.

The items in this single-vendor sale come from the private collection of David Lovatt, proprietor of Bank Street Records in Adelaide from 1985 to 1994. He bought and sold rock/pop memorabilia as part of the business.

This includes autographs, posters, records and memorabilia, relating to The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Velvet Underground, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Miles Davis, Pink Floyd, and others ...

He played bass in the Adelaide tribute band Texas Flood (Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix), which supported international blues greats John Hammond, Earl King and others.

David personally obtained all autographs in the auction unless stated otherwise.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

This is an online-only timed auction hosted by Invaluable.com. There will be no in-room bidding for this sale.

Lots will begin to close starting at 12 pm (ACDT) on Monday 25 March 2024.

Buyer's premium: 20%

Online bidding fee: 5%

Click on each lot to see a full description and additional images.

All items are available for viewing at our North Terrace premises. However, for the majority of you who are not Adelaideans and for whom personal inspection is not an option, all items are accurately described and photographed, and are covered by our conditional guarantee.

Please ensure you have read the Auction Details available on the auction page.

If you have any questions, please contact us on (+61) 08 8223 1111 or at treloars@treloars.com

View and bid on Invaluable.com

Catalogue 78

Catalogue 78

Our latest catalogue contains an impressive selection of manuscripts and autographs, including documents signed by King George IV, King William IV, and Governor George Gawler; letters from W. Baldwin Spencer, T.E. Lawrence, Barry Humphries, and Colin Thiele; signed photographs of Errol Flynn and Anthony Eden; and a presentation copy of Poems 1926-1930 by Robert Graves, with numerous corrections and alterations to the text.

There are many books on Indigenous Australia, not least relating to languages (Teichelmann and Schurmann 1840; Curr 1886-87; Milligan 1890; Schmidt 1952), and art and culture (including Basedow, Fison and Howitt, Hammond, Tindale, Walsh, and Worsnop).

Accounts of voyages, exploration and travel include Magra 1771, Warburton 1875, Lindsay 1888, Tietkens 1890, Birtles 1909, Scott 1913, and Terry 1930. Books of botanical interest include the Basilisk Press edition of The Red Books of Humphry Repton (1976), Maiden’s The Flowering Plants and Ferns of New South Wales (1895-98), Flora of the Kimberley Region (1992), and Orchids of Western Australia (2008).