Gifts and the gifted

I WONDER if the double-estimate price paid for a copy of Sir Thomas Browne’s Hydriotaphia, Urne was influenced by the release of the film or purely because of its Sangorski & Sutcliffe cream sheepskin binding and illustrations by Paul Nash. I happened to enjoy the film almost immediately after watching the Chiswick Auctions sale, a happy coincidence, as Browne’s ostensible reason for writing the essays, published in 1658, was the unearthing of about 50 Anglo-Saxon funerary pots in Norfolk. On it he constructed a baroque meditation on mortality, which has been described as difficult, but rewarding.