What are the most valuable first-edition English books? Sotheby’s estimates that the most valuable are Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rab bit (1901) and Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows (1908), which could both fetch £50,000.
Tag: 09.02.03
Sir Terry Frost, 87
Abstract painter Sir Terry Frost has died of cancer. “Sir Terry was at the forefront of abstract art in Britain and was renowned for his use of vibrant colours, dolloping blobs of colour and spiralling squiggles on to his canvasses.”
The Cellini Ransom
An insurance company has received a ransom demand for a Cellini scuplture, stolen three months ago from an Austrian museum. “According to reports, the Uniqa insurance company received a letter last week demanding €5m (£3.5m) for the return of the Saliera or Saltcellar. This is thought to be the first response that insurers or police have had from the thieves who stole the 16th century solid gold sculpture by Benvenuto Cellini, estimated to be worth €50m, in a raid three months ago.”
The Kennedy Center Problem
Catesby Leigh doesn’t like the Kennedy Center’s Rafael Viñoly plans for a $250 million addition to Washington’s Kennedy Center. At all. “For starters, the public space created by the eight-acre deck (including the roadway) is absurdly overblown. The plaza will be a desolate, windswept space. Moreover, an open-air stairway to the Potomac promenade from the Center’s existing terrace would be far preferable to the one Mr. Viñoly proposes. And his futuristic buildings may end up looking like airport terminals. The deck and the new buildings on it must be designed to provide inviting, humanely scaled public spaces. Mr. Viñoly’s scheme does not even begin to grasp this issue.”