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Our October 8 auction presents 202 lots spanning an unusually broad sweep of collecting interests, from serious photographic literature to regional Americana, with particular depth in the history of photography periodicals. Students of the medium will find extensive runs of Aperture, LensWork, Camera Arts, and earlier titles such as American Photography, Photo-Era, and The Camera, offering a rare opportunity to acquire sustained archives of twentieth- and twenty-first-century photographic thought and practice in a single sale. The auction is equally notable for its concentration of Waterbury, Connecticut material — a coherent archive of regional ephemera encompassing obsolete currency, stampless covers, a circa-1850 daguerreotype broadside advertising E. S. Hayden’s studio, patent medicine labels from the Chief Two Moon Herb Company, payroll ledgers from Scovill Manufacturing, and concert programs documenting Pablo Casals performing at the Palace Theatre — forming a remarkably granular portrait of a New England industrial city across more than a century. Illustrated books are well represented throughout, including a T. Heath Robinson–illustrated Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, Prang chromolithograph design plates, the first American edition of Helmut Newton’s Portraits, and a folio copy of Braun & Schneider’s Zur Geschichte der Kostüme with its full complement of hand-colored costume plates. Rounding out the sale are holdings in peace and Catholic Worker movement periodicals, Irish rebellion studies, economics, fine art catalogues, and an assortment of mid-century ephemera that rewards the generalist collector as much as the specialist.

Our October 1 sale presents 220 lots spanning illustrated books, fine photography, American ephemera, and vintage paper collectibles, with particular depth in a few areas that will reward specialists and general collectors alike. Leading the sale is an exceptional gathering of Walt Kelly's Pogo material — first editions, first printings, and scarce early Simon and Schuster paperbacks from the 1950s through the 1970s, including Songs of the Pogo and several Sunday compilation volumes — forming one of the more comprehensive Kelly offerings to appear at auction in recent years. Fine press collectors will find strong representation from the Limited Editions Club, with signed copies of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire illustrated by Al Hirschfeld, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera with lithographs by Mariette Lydis, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight among the highlights. Photography enthusiasts are well served by runs of Aperture, LensWork, and DoubleTake alongside vintage issues of Minicam and The Camera, rare early photographic satire in the 1894 Snap Shots with an Old Maid's Kodak, and rich documentation of Waterbury, Connecticut studio portraiture from the 1890s through the mid-twentieth century. Rounding out the sale are substantial runs of Massachusetts and Connecticut local history pamphlets, a scripophily archive encompassing mining, radio, cinema, and novelty corporate certificates — including Lena Horne Beauty Products stock — Waterbury regional advertising ephemera, and several lots of vintage postcards and vernacular photography that speak to the enduring appeal of American material culture.