When Ronald Searle came to New York in February of 1969, he visited his friend the agent John Locke as well as his wife Midge. Searle must have taken down from the shelf one of Locke's copies of the U.K. edition of his latest collection, The Square Egg (1968) and inscribed and decorated it specially for the couple. The resulting ink and watercolor drawing is on the front free endpaper of the book and it's a beauty. It depicts a bird with eggs in multiple uncomfortable shapes and is dated "5 February 1969." I don't believe it was on the market previously. It was sold at auction yesterday.
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| "For Midge & John [Locke] with love New York 5 February 1969 Ronald" |
The dust cover of the British edition has a drawing which makes good use of a rubber stamp.
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| Ronald Searle's printed signature on the cover |
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| "For Midge & John [Locke] with love New York 5 February 1969 Ronald" |
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| Ronald Searle Live Auctioneers listing accessed September 13, 2025, three days before the sale |
I was reminded that presale bidding on the Live Auctioneers site does not have to reflect what is going on at the auctioneer's own site, and vice versa. It's good to check both. A much different story was unfolding on the Showplace website, where bidding was already up to one-hundred times the opening bid a full three days before the auction:
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| Ronald Searle Live Auctioneers item description |
Searle used a very similar idea, but no color, in the drawing for his secretary Jean Ellsmoor's copy of the book in October 1968. The Lockes, of course, would never have seen this. In my post of March 1, 2022, I wrote, "It is, I believe, the quintessential example of a personalized copy of The Square Egg." The drawing is very fine indeed, but I now wish to retract my earlier statement.
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| "Well—let's hope that this mixture turns out to be the right shape. To Jean [Ellsmoor] with love from Ronald October 1968." |
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