Book rescued from bonfire sells for £43k (From Salisbury Journal)

Book rescued from bonfire sells for £43k

8:10am Thursday 11th March 2010 in New Forest News By Anne Morris

RESCUED from a garden bonfire in the New Forest, a book of 40 rare pen and ink drawings has gone under the hammer for £43,000 at Netherhampton Salerooms.

The unbound small folio album, entitled Views of the China Seas & Macao taken during Capt. D. Ross’ Surveys by M. Houghton, reached this staggering figure at the Fine Art and Decorative Sale held at the salerooms on Wednesday, March 3.

Books consultant Bill Hoade explained an estimate of between £2,000 and £3,000 had been put on the album for the catalogue as he had not had time to fully research its origin.

But on closer inspection Mr Hoade noticed one of the pictures was of Singapore from the Rocky Point, 1819.

He said: “This drawing is one of the earliest drawings of Singapore. For it was in 1819 that British colonial |administrator Thomas Stamford Raffles established a settlement there.”

Although Houghton signed many of the drawings, Mr Hoade was not able to discover more information about the artist in time for the sale.

He was able to establish Captain Daniel Ross was sent by the East India Company to Cochin China to survey the Paracel Islands in 1807, and his work continued throughout the next decade, publishing the charts in 1821.

One of the ships that Captain Ross sailed was HMS Alceste, and this is one of the ships featured in the drawing of Hysansue Harbour in the Yellow Sea.

The Alceste was the vessel which took Lord Amherst, in 1814, on his Embassy to China to further the East India Company’s trading links.

The seller, who lives in the New Forest, took the book into Netherhampton Salerooms for Mr Hoade’s advice.

Mr Hoade said: “She told me she had wrestled the book from her grandmother’s hands as it was about the be thrown on a bonfire,” he said. “She thought it might be suitable for one of our general sales.”

But Mr Hoade knew there was something more to this book.

“The more I found out the history of the drawings, the more interesting it became,” he said.

“By the time I had done all the research I could, I knew it would fetch upwards of £20k.”

The buyer was a London bookseller.