LONDON.- A unique Andy Warhol silkscreen print of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands is one of many artefacts to be found at Shapero Rare Books’s stand at this year’s TEFAF.

Made in 1985, it is a unique trial proof in an edition of 30. It comes from Warhol’s Reigning Queens series, which also featured Queen Elizabeth II. Beatrix, now 78, never met Warhol, who used an official photograph for the print, and it is not known if she owns a copy herself. It is available from Shapero Rare Books at £50,000.

Shapero are also offering a complete collection of John Gould’s magnificent bird books. Gould was one of the most distinguished ornithologists of the 19th Century, producing books of unrivalled beauty and scholarship. A single edition of these luxurious books would comfortably occupy any library as its centrepiece; the complete collection – 12 folio works in 44 volumes (most bound in full or half green morocco) with 3158 fine hand-coloured lithographs – is being offered for £1.5m.

Guillaume Durandus’ Rationale Divinorum Officiorum was the first major piece of writing by a known and named author to be published. It appeared in 1459 and is a compendium explaining the mystical origins and meanings of the ceremonies, customs and interpretation of the Roman Rite. Its historical importance – only two other copies in private hands are known, one of which is not illuminated – make it hugely rare. It is being for £525,000.

Also available is John James Audubon’s last great work, The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. The book is comprised of one hundred and fifty hand-coloured lithographic plates in three Atlas volumes make up this definitive work that prompted the noted historian William S. Reese to call it ‘the largest successful colour-plate book project of 19th Century America.’ It is being offered for sale at £400,000.

The first colour-plate book to depict the natural history of Americas, Mark Catesby’s The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands: Containing the Figures of Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents, Insects and Plants’ (1729-) is a first edition and features 220 fine hand-coloured plates. It is considered the most authoritative treatment of the natural history of British North America before the American Revolution, and is notable not just for its powerful ecological view of nature, but also for the personality Catesby evokes in his animal subjects. It is being offered at £400,000.