The Forgotten Heroes
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An auction catalogue is ostensibly a simple tool; a listing of the pertinent information for each lot in a sale.
But it actually is more than that.
Not only are the images, essays and other texts often very illuminating, but as a whole they can tell you less tangible things about the tastes of the time. Which artists get the colour plates in the days when such treatment was the real star billing? How much did the lots make and was there a lot of bidding? Find a marked copy and you might even see who bought something!
Like film lobby posters, auction catalogues were printed in large numbers, yet try and find a copy from a particular sale and you can struggle. With questions being asked about how long the digital libraries businesses keep will be available and to whom, the physical relic of an auction, landmark, single-owner or just mid-season, will always deliver