LONDON.- The sale of Exploration and Travel including the Polar Sale realised £1,650,975 / $2,590,380 / €1,944,849 and was sold 85% by value and 79% by lot.

The top lot was Herbert George Ponting's three master albums of contact prints from the British Antarctic Expedition, 1910-13, which fetched £169,250 / $265,553 / €199,377.

Nicholas Lambourn, Director of Exploration and Travel and Julian Wilson, Specialist, Books: Today’s auction saw bidding from 18 different countries, including significant Canadian interest. Lot 32 demonstrated that, once again, Christie’s is setting world records for this ethnographic book – Christie’s New York sold the Hauck copy in June 2006 for $144,000 and at South Kensington in 2005 for £72,000; today this record was broken again. This copy had unusually large, fresh samples of tapa cloth specimens, collected on Captain Cook’s 3rd voyage to the South Seas.

We were also thrilled with the response to the Sir Charles Seymour Wright Collection, which realised over £370,000, far exceeding pre-sale estimates. The collection attracted international interest in the lead up to the sale and drew bids from both institutions and collectors. Wright’s archive of little-known photographs of Scott’s last expedition realised the top price in the collection, selling for £73,250.

Adrian Raeside, grandson of Charles Wright: I am delighted that this sale has attracted so much interest in the 1910 British Antarctic Expedition and feel that its members would be both surprised and delighted that 100 years later their importance is being realised. The spotlight has been put on the lesser known members of that trip, and if Wright had not have found Scott’s tent, no one would have known what had happened at the South Pole.