Rare books and art call for collectors
• Large selection on auction at Thorold’s Book Farm
Bernardi Auctioneers will be offering selected South African art, sculpture and rare books on auction at 11am on September 2 at the renowned Thorold’s Book Farm in Kya Sand, Randburg.
Rare books on hunting and travel will feature, with an 1806 edition of Barrow’s Travels Into The Interior of Southern Africa, Butler’s South African Sketches (1841), The Wild Sports of Southern Africa by Cornwallis Harris (1844) and Narrative of a Journey to the Zoolu Country in South Africa by Allen Francis Gardiner. Books by Burchell, Butler, Gordon-Cumming, Mungo Park, Le Vaillant, Latrobe and FC Selous will be on offer.
Among the Africana is a copy of Oppenheimer and Son, signed by Harry Oppenheimer, with a small JM Rogier oil portrait of Sir Ernest Oppenheimer.
There are some unusual books on the Anglo-Boer War, including a collection of Britain’s Parliamentary Papers, a List of Casualties in South African Field Forces as well as a small collection of German books.
Of interest will be two bound volumes of the French journal Le Rire (1899-1901) illustrating cartoons on the war as well as Staniforth’s Cartoons of the Boer War 1900-1902.
Volumes on ethnology, archaeology, African and rock art, and South African architecture and art reference books will conclude the book section, with Aschenborn, Bleek, Fouche, Shooter, Lewcock, Breuil, Pager, Mason, Schwaneke and Tretchikoff represented.
A highlight will be the artist’s book by Judith Mason of Patrick Cullinan’s Selected poems 19611991. This features handmade marquetry covers, 40 handprinted lithographs and four hand-coloured drawings, as well as a small oil frontispiece – The Estuary. It is signed by Mason, Cullinan and S Watson and is hand-numbered 31/40.
The star art attraction, an imposing naively carved leadwood and leather drum, entitled Ngoma Lungundu – The Drum of Thunder, made by the renowned Venda artist Noria Mabasa, symbolises women’s struggle for equality.
Mabasa was the exception in this male-dominated domain.
There are also a couple of her baked and painted clay sculptures on auction.
Traditional wood sculptures by Jackson Hlungwani, Goldwin Ndou, Aswi Magora, Philip Rhikotso and John Baloyi should pique the interest of collectors.
The paintings feature eight turn-of-the-century Natal landscape watercolours by AM Goodall, another by French artist and explorer F Christol, six ethnographic studies by Edward Thayneaux, oils by Allerly Glossop and EC Moor and a Charles Rolando seascape.
An ink sketch by DC Boonzaier and Cape scenes by JS Morland and William Timlin will also come under the hammer.
The auction takes place on site at Thorold’s Book Farm, 44 Orleans Road, Randburg.
Previews take place this weekend and next week.