---
title: "A Hockney print hidden in a book for 46 years sells for £41,000"
description: "A signed print by David Hockney, tucked inside a book donated to a Norwich charity shop and unnoticed for decades, has sold at auction for more than £41,000. The chance find, weeks after the artist's death, has raised a windfall for charity."
category: "Culture"
category_url: https://newsparlor.com/category/culture
author: "Thomas Berger"
published: 2026-07-18T10:30:00.000Z
updated: 2026-07-18T10:30:00.000Z
canonical: https://newsparlor.com/article/hockney-print-found-charity-shop-book-auction
tags: ["art", "david-hockney", "auction", "charity", "norwich"]
---
# A Hockney print hidden in a book for 46 years sells for £41,000

A signed print by David Hockney, tucked inside a book donated to a Norwich charity shop and unnoticed for decades, has sold at auction for more than £41,000. The chance find, weeks after the artist's death, has raised a windfall for charity.

It is the kind of discovery that keeps charity-shop volunteers looking twice at every donation. A signed print by David Hockney, one of Britain's most celebrated artists, spent 46 years hidden inside a book before turning up on a shop counter in Norwich, and it has now sold at auction for more than £41,000.

The print was found by Jemma Banks, a long-serving volunteer and local artist at the Salvation Army's charity shop on Goat Lane in Norwich, [who noticed the value of a donated copy of "Paper Pools"](https://www.northnorfolknews.co.uk/news/national/26291377.signed-david-hockney-print-found-charity-shop-sells-gbp41-000/) and found the original signed print tucked inside. Published in 1980, "Paper Pools" documents some of Hockney's best-known swimming-pool works, and the print had apparently lain undisturbed within its pages for more than four decades.

## From shop counter to five figures

Once its authenticity had been established, the piece was offered for sale, and bidding climbed to £41,160, a striking return for an item that had arrived as an ordinary book donation. The charity described it as an exceptionally rare collector's piece, and the proceeds will go to support the Salvation Army's work.

How the print came to be inside the book, whether slipped in deliberately for safekeeping or simply forgotten, is not known. What is clear is that its long anonymity ended at exactly the moment interest in Hockney's work is especially high.

## A poignant moment

The sale comes only weeks after Hockney's death. The artist, a defining figure in British art whose bright, luminous paintings of swimming pools and Yorkshire landscapes made him one of the most recognisable painters of his era, [died in June at the age of 88](https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/12/style/artist-david-hockney-death-intl). His passing prompted tributes from across the art world and beyond, and has renewed attention on every corner of his vast output, from major canvases to prints like the one found in Norwich.

## A lesson in looking closely

For the Salvation Army, the windfall is a reminder that treasures can arrive unannounced among bags of donated goods, and that a sharp eye can turn a routine drop-off into a substantial gift. For everyone else, it is a small, cheering story of hidden value: a masterful hand, a forgotten book, and a print that waited nearly half a century for someone to open the cover and look.