Auction Highlights: Focus on Women — May 23, 2024

Catalogue & Bidding

The May 23, 2024, Focus on Women sale features books, prints, original art, photographs, ephemera, archives, and more produced by women from the 16th century through the 21st. The sale begins with books written, printed and owned by women in the hand press period, including a book bound in the 16th century with Queen Elizabeth’s coat of arms. Bidders can trace the development of women’s letters through the 18th and 19th centuries with works by Mary Wollstonecraft, Anne Radcliffe, Jane Austen, Charlotte & Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Margaret Fuller, and more. A section of works by contemporary authors features Margaret Atwood’s first book, several signed copies of To Kill a Mockingbird, and original correspondence from a number of authors and thinkers. We are proud to feature a section emphasizing Black women’s contributions to art, social issues and letters, including original material from Maya Angelou, Sarah Bradford’s biography of Harriet Tubman, and works by Elizabeth Catlett and Bettye Saar. Our top lot is a special set of more than 100 original photographs used in Ericka Huggins’s 2022 book, Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party, each signed by photographer Stephen Shames.

Women’s art makes up a large portion of the sale and includes paintings, prints, sculptures and photographs. The sale is rounded out with a selection of ephemera mainly related to suffrage and feminism and ends with a strong section of important archives.

Ericka Huggins, Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party, signed first edition, with 115 Original Photographs by Stephen Shames, Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK, 2022. Estimate $65,000 to $75,000.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Small Archive of Family-Owned Photographic Portraits, seven black-and-white portraits of Gilman taken at various times in her life, dated on verso. Estimate $800 to $1,200.
Dr. Lora Genevieve Dyer, Very Large Archive including Journals, Letters, Photographs, and More. Estimate $5,000 to $7,000.
Pierre de Nolhac, Madame Vigée-Le Brun. Peintre de la Reine Marie-Antoinette, first edition, in a
Cosway Binding with Four Painted Miniatures, Paris, 1908. Estimate $8,000 to $12,000.
Elizabeth Catlett, Survivor, linocut, together with Samella Lewis’s The Art of Elizabeth Catless, limited edition, signed and inscribed by Catlett, 1984. Estimate $3,000 to $5,000.
Yulla Halberstadt Lipchitz, Untitled Woman [or Fairy] Fighting with Merperson, bronze sculpture, circa 1973-78. Estimate $2,000 to $3,000.
Female Printer: Hannah Sawbridge, William Lawson’s A New Orchard & Garden: Or, the Best Way for Planting, Graffing, and to Make any Ground Good for a Rich Orchard, London, 1683. Estimate $800 to $1,200.
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, with an ALS, Inscribed first edition, Philadelphia & New York, 1960. Estimate $10,000 to $15,000.

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April 26, 2024
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Category: Fine Books & Manuscripts
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