Hornseys - the gallery, 3 Kirkgate, Ripon (2026)

25/08/2026

A few recent additions to the ceramics collection at Hornseys — ranging from British and Irish studio pottery to artist-designed ceramics.

There’s a signed Mick Arnup stoneware bowl dated 1997, understated and beautifully glazed; a substantial Hannah Arnup / Ballymorris Pottery jug with characteristic green glaze and spiral decoration; and a large Ballymorris footed bowl, using the broad ceramic surface almost like a canvas for freely worked botanical decoration.

Alongside the studio pottery are two very different artist-designed plates: Mark Hearld’s Hippocampus, produced for York Museums Trust and associated with his The Lumber Room: Unimagined Treasures project at York Art Gallery, and Emily Sutton’s In the Country, designed for Yorkshire Sculpture Park around the time of her Town and Country exhibition.

Quite a satisfying group together — very different makers and approaches, but all sharing that point where fine art, illustration, craft and functional design overlap.

They are now available on our website priced between £40 and £145.

19/08/2026

No, not the effects of ma*****na… this really is a growling bear on wheels. 🐼

And quite a bear it is.

Now available on our website is this substantial Steiff Panda On Wheels 1938 Replica, EAN 400452, produced in Germany in 2008 as a worldwide limited edition of just 1,000 pieces.

This example is number 286/1000 and measures an impressive 50 cm. Made from genuine black-and-white mohair and traditionally filled with wood excelsior, the panda is mounted on four substantial spoked wheels in the manner of Steiff’s historic pull-along animals.

It also retains one of its most entertaining original features: the ring-pull voice/growler mechanism, which is present and working correctly.

Complete with its Steiff “Button in Ear”, white limited-edition ear tag, original chest tag, numbered certificate, supplementary manufacturer’s information card and original box.

The design looks back to 1938, when Steiff developed one of its earliest panda designs, making this a wonderfully eccentric combination of teddy-bear history, traditional toy making and frankly magnificent wheeled engineering.

In excellent condition, with only light storage wear to the box.

£445 — now available on our website.

Proof, should it ever be needed, that almost everything is improved by the addition of wheels.

19/08/2026

“Murder! Insanity! Death!” — South Shields, 1967.

This may look like something from an American Re**er Madness-era poster — and there is a good reason for that.

This extraordinary original press photograph was taken in a South Shields club and archived on 24 August 1967.

The warning notice being displayed was produced by the Inter-State Narcotic Association of Chicago and told the public to:

“Beware! Young and Old – People in All Walks of Life!”

of the supposedly terrifying consequences of ma*****na.

The American Institute of the History of Pharmacy preserves the same placard and dates it to around 1940.

So here, nearly thirty years later, it was still being used in a club in North-East England.

And the date makes it even better.

Britain's first Legalise Pot Rally had taken place at Speakers’ Corner on 16 July 1967.

Then, on 24 July, The Times carried a famous full-page advertisement calling for reform of Britain's ma*****na laws, supported by numerous public figures including all four Beatles.

This photograph was archived on 24 August — exactly one month later.

The original caption survives on the reverse:

“This warning notice, pinned up in a South Shields club, shows that clubland itself is concerned about the drug menace, and drug traffic.”

An extraordinary little survivor from a moment when Britain was arguing very publicly about drugs, youth culture and changing social attitudes — while South Shields clubland apparently wasn't taking any chances.

Now available from Hornseys priced £95.

#1967 *****naHistory *****na **erMadness

19/08/2026

A rather special piece of Noël Coward history which we will be taking to the PBFA York Book Fair next month.

This is an original press photograph dated 3 February 1970, showing Sir Noël Coward leaving Buckingham Palace after receiving his knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II at that day’s investiture. The original caption survives on the reverse and identifies the two women accompanying him as Mrs G. Calthorp and, on the right, Miss Carey.

What makes it especially appealing to us is the connection with a group of Coward books we will also be bringing to York: copies personally inscribed by Coward to members of his close circle of friends, including Miss Carey herself.

Seen together, the photograph and the books move beyond ordinary literary memorabilia. They preserve something of Coward’s private world — the friendships surrounding one of the most recognisable figures in twentieth-century British theatre at the very moment his contribution to the arts received formal national recognition.

Coward, characteristically elegant in top hat and morning dress, had waited a surprisingly long time for the honour. By 1970 he had already given Britain decades of plays, songs, films, performances and some of the sharpest dialogue in modern theatre.

We are looking forward to bringing this photograph, together with the inscribed Coward material, to York next month.

#1970

15/08/2026

A genuine piece of Shakespeare’s England — 1587.

This original leaf comes from the second edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles — the edition now established as the one extensively used by William Shakespeare when writing his history plays and Macbeth.

But the subject of this particular page is something rather different.

It is William Harrison’s extraordinary chapter:

“Of such ports and creekes as our sea-faring men doe note for their benefit upon the coasts of England.”

Harrison works his way around Elizabethan England county by county, recording the ports, havens and tiny coastal creeks known to contemporary mariners.

Northumberland. Durham. Yorkshire. Lincolnshire. Norfolk. Suffolk. Essex…

For us, the Yorkshire section is particularly enjoyable: a snapshot of our coast more than 430 years ago, before centuries of erosion, harbour development and changing place-names transformed it.

Turn the leaf over and Harrison is discussing the geography of Britain more broadly.

Then page 108 moves directly into:

“Of the aire, soile, and commodities of this Iland.”

Was the famously cloudy British climate really inferior to that of continental Europe?

Harrison thought not.

He calls upon Caesar, classical authorities and his own experience to argue that British air was wholesome and the climate remarkably temperate.

The leaf comes from Holinshed’s great second edition of 1587, printed in London by Henry Denham — the edition Shakespeare would use as one of the principal sources for Richard II, Richard III, the Henry plays, Macbeth, Cymbeline and others.

We are not claiming that Shakespeare used the text on these particular two pages. What makes them special is that they are original leaves from the very edition that sat behind so much of his historical world.

Pages 107–108.
Size: approximately 23.2 x 35 cm.

Available on our website priced at £40:

https://hornseys.com/product/william-harrison-the-description-of-britaine-ports-creeks-and-the-air-soil-of-england-original-leaf-from-holinsheds-chronicles-london-1587/

#1587

15/08/2026

Two tiny leaves — but an extraordinary amount of Reformation history.

We have been researching these two sixteenth-century German leaves for some time, and can now identify the texts they contain much more securely.

One preserves part of the 1549 confession of Johann Friedrich I of Saxony, one of Martin Luther’s most important political protectors. Captured after the Battle of Mühlberg and imprisoned by Emperor Charles V, Johann Friedrich was pressed to accept the Augsburg Interim.

He refused.

The words visible here include his extraordinary declaration that considerations of conscience meant that even danger to his body and life could not compel him to consent.

Turn to the other leaf and the text changes — but the Reformation connection becomes even stronger.

It contains part of Martin Luther’s Vermanunge zum Gebet wider den Türcken, his Admonition to Prayer Against the Turks, written amid renewed Ottoman military pressure upon central Europe.

The passage begins:

“Darumb wache auff lieber HERR Gott…”

and the final page concludes with a prayer through “unsern HERRN Jhesum Christ” followed by a magnificent AMEN.

All four sides are enclosed within elaborate Renaissance woodcut borders filled with architectural ornament, foliage, grotesques and putti. One even contains the tiny motto:

“GOT ALLEIN DIE ERE” — To God alone be the glory.

They have previously been associated with a 1567 Wittenberg edition of Luther’s Works. That remains possible, but until we can prove the precise printing we are keeping the attribution cautious: German Lutheran printing, c.1550–1570.

Each leaf measures only approximately 9.1 x 14.4 cm.

Small objects. Enormous historical context.

Available from Hornseys priced at £95.

15/08/2026

There is something rather wonderful about turning the pages of Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia of 1588 and travelling from the geographical world of Homer and the Odyssey through Greece and the Aegean, onwards to Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire, Persia and finally Egypt.

Our newly catalogued group of nine original leaves — eighteen printed pages — includes a substantial woodcut map of Greece and the Aegean, together with views of Constantinople, military scenes and a remarkable succession of portraits of Ottoman rulers including Osman, Orhan, Murad, Bayezid and Süleyman.

The Greece map takes us across a landscape whose names still resonate from classical literature: the Greek mainland, the Morea, Crete and the islands of the Aegean. These pages do not illustrate Homer or attempt to plot Odysseus’s voyage, but they show the physical world upon which generations of readers have placed those ancient stories.

From there Münster moves into the very different geopolitical world of the sixteenth century — Constantinople under Ottoman rule, the expansion of the Turkish Empire, its sultans and armies — before carrying his reader onwards towards Persia and Egypt.

That extraordinary combination of ancient geography, contemporary politics, history, travel and legend is part of what makes Münster’s Cosmographia such a fascinating book.

Printed in Basel in 1588 and now nearly 440 years old.

The nine leaves will remain together as one group.

Available now from Hornseys website priced at £225.

#1588

14/08/2026

Sometimes the depth and sheer variety of stock at Hornseys rather speaks for itself.

Our previous listing was an original 1962 press photograph relating to Stanley Kubrick’s Lo**ta.

The very next item? An original fifteenth-century incunable leaf from Nicolaus de Lyra’s Postilla super Psalterium, printed in Gothic type, retaining contemporary hand-painted blue and red initials, and containing “Venite exultemus Domino” — Psalm 94 in the Vulgate, Psalm 95 today.

From Lo**ta to de Lyra in consecutive listings.

There probably aren’t many catalogues where those two sit comfortably next to one another — but so be it. We have always preferred buying things that interest us rather than trying to make the stock fit neatly into one category.

Books, maps, bears, photographs, prints, manuscripts, ephemera, original artwork, antiquities of printing and the occasional thing that simply refuses to be categorised properly.

It keeps life interesting.

It's now available on our website priced at £125.

**ta

14/08/2026

Sue Lyon as Lo**ta, 1962.

Another exceptional original photograph from our press archive — and this is one of the strongest we have found.

A large 10 × 8-inch original press photograph of Sue Lyon as Dolores “Lo**ta” Haze, produced for Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lo**ta.

Look closely at the lower-right corner and you will see the original production reference:

L-67

The reverse retains its Shields Gazette Library provenance and is precisely dated:

5 November 1962

So this is not a later photograph of Sue Lyon and not a modern reproduction. It is an original production-numbered photograph circulating in the British press during the film’s original release year. Original Lo**ta photographs of this quality are far from plentiful.

The combination of Kubrick, Nabokov, Sue Lyon, 1962 provenance and the original L-series production number makes these photographs a fascinating meeting point between film history, literary collecting and original photography.

Now available from Hornseys.

**ta #1962

14/08/2026

Our favourite Roald Dahl photograph so far…

An extraordinary original 1986 London Weekend Television press photograph of Roald Dahl and Ian McKellen, produced for a special edition of The South Bank Show.

And yes — that really is Ian McKellen lurking behind Dahl.

The reverse retains not one but two original LWT publicity sheets, identifying:

“IAN McKELLEN and ROALD DAHL”

and giving the programme as:

Roald Dahl – A Life In His Day

for transmission on Sunday 19 October 1986.

The programme was anything but a conventional author documentary. Director Jack Bond created a fantastical journey through Dahl’s imagination, mixing the real writer with the strange characters and situations of his fictional world. It is subsequently also known as Roald Dahl: Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum.

The BFI describes Ian McKellen as moving through the psychological landscapes of Dahl’s books — which rather wonderfully explains what is happening here.

It gets stranger still: the film made such an impression on Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys that they subsequently employed director Jack Bond for their own surreal film It Couldn’t Happen Here.

An original 10 × 8-inch LWT photograph, complete with its surviving contemporary publicity documentation.

Gloriumptious, slightly unsettling and unmistakably Dahl.

Now available from Hornseys priced at £225

#1986

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