I love birds. I love books. Yesterday evening there was a perfect coming together of the two at Sotheby's in London, when Audubon's Birds of America sold for £7.3m - a new world record for a book sold at auction.
The four-volume work, in a huge double-elephant folio, had been on display at the auction house alongside other wondrous items from the collection of Frederick, 2nd Lord Hesketh.
Having toddled along to Bond Street earlier in the week to take a peek, I can confirm that it was a completely stunning thing of wondrous beauty. I took a couple of pics that can't possibly do justice to it (this BBC report does better), so here's Lord Hesketh's bookplate instead. His collection also included a Shakespeare First Folio, and Historia Plantarum rariorum the first botanical book to be illustrated with colour printed plates. After a look around that little lot I left London's west end full of the joys of beautiful printing and binding.
In a perfect fantasy world Lord Gavron would have bought the Audubon and I could perhaps have dreamed of a Folio Society facsimile edition to call my own. It would have meant moving house to somewhere more spacious, with a library, and a butler to turn the pages... but hey, we can all dream. As it was, London fine art dealer Michael Tollemache emerged as the victorious bidder on the day. He confirmed that he has no plans to break the books up into individual plates, a fate that has befallen some of the other copies.
It made me think, though, about whether in another couple of hundred years' time - assuming the earth hasn't shrugged the irritant that is humankind off its crust by then - it will be these same exquisite books appearing once again in auctioneers' catalogues, or will new classic rarities emerge?
Folio Society works, perhaps? Addison Publications' The Highgrove Florilegium? John Lydon's Mr Rotten's Scrapbook (in a limited edition of 750)? Oh, for a time machine.
