LONDON — It’s quite a nest egg. John James Audubon’s “Birds of America,” a rare blend of art, natural history and craftsmanship, fetched more than $10 million at auction Tuesday, making it the world’s most expensive published book.
With its 435 hand-colored illustrations of birds drawn to size, the volume is one of the best-preserved editions of Audubon’s 19th-century masterpiece. The sale at Sotheby’s auction house had been anticipated for months by wealthy collectors.
The book sold for $10,270,000 to an anonymous collector bidding by telephone, the auction house said.
Because each picture is so valuable, there have been fears the volume will be broken up and sold as separate works of art. But experts believe that’s unlikely. The tome is probably more valuable intact. And collectors hold Audubon in such reverence that the notion of ripping apart a perfect copy would be akin to sacrilege.
