Gertrude Jekyll Autograph Letters Lead Book Section of Renny Reynolds Auction
A group of 16 volumes published by Country Life, sold for $2,304
More than 150 volumes from landscape architect Renny Reynolds’ personal library on garden design and architecture went under the hammer at Freeman’s | Hindman Garden Party: The Collection of Renny Reynolds auction.
Reynolds’s client list included Giorgio Armani, Diana Ross, and Andy Warhol, while he also orchestrated receptions at the White House for Presidents Ford, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton. In 1992, published The Art of the Party, often referred to as “the party planner’s bible.”
In addition to the sale which focused on his private collection of the Pennsylvania Impressionists, highlights from his library included a group of 10 volumes by Gertrude Jekyll including a first edition (London, Country Life, 1901) of her Wall & Water Gardens ($1,536) inscribed "G. Duff Gordon with love from Gertrude Jekyll June 29 1901", and a group of three signed autograph letters to artist William Nicholson ($2,176).
Other highlights included:
- a group of four works by William Robinson including a first edition (London, Frederick Warne and Co. 1868) of his first book Gleanings From French Gardens (sold for $960)
- a group of eight volumes by Vita Sackville West including a first edition (New York/London, Harper & Brothers, 1939) of Country Notes ($768)
- An Enquiry Into The Changes of Taste in Landscape Gardening by the major English landscape gardening designer Humphry Repton, first edition (London, J. Taylor, 1806) ($640)
- Italian Villas and Their Gardens by Edith Wharton, first edition (New York, The Century Co. 1904) featuring pictures by Maxfield Parrish ($1,408)
- Hortulus, or The Little Garden by Walafrid Strabo (London, The Stanton Press, (1923),. first and very limited edition of Strabo's famous 9th century poem on gardening, one of only eight copies printed as such ($256)
- American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted's Forty Years of Landscape Architecture (New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1922, 1928) in two volumes, volume II illustrated with black and white photographs, and large folding plate of Central Park ($1,408)
