Category — Antique Map Collecting

The Texas Map Society’s Annual Spring Meeting will be held Friday thru Sunday, April 3-5, 2009 in San Antonio Texas.

This year’s focus is on Spanish Colonial Mapping and their Map Makers:

The three days will include presentations by a group of exceptional scholars focusing on “Spanish Colonial Mapping and Map Makers,” and an outstanding lineup of tours, dinners and events in and around one of Texas’ most famous tourist destinations.

Presenters include Richard Kagan, of John Hopkins University, our Keynote Speaker, as well as John Hébert of the Library of Congress, David Buisseret, formerly at the University of Texas at Arlington, Ricardo Padrón, at the University of Virginia, John Miller Morris of the University of Texas at San Antonio, John Wheat of the Center for American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and Bruce Winders, Curator and Historian of the Alamo.

Tours include the Project Urban Segment of the San Antonio River (60 million dollar improvement project), P2 Energy Solutions for digital mapping, and the Nelson Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

Via: MapHist
[tags]texas map society, map societies, map collecting, antique maps[/tags]

A recent article in the Financial Times of London delves into the possible motivations of those who steal rare books, antique maps and manuscripts. “What drives people to steal precious books“, by Tim Richardson, examines the exploits of some recent map thieves, such as E. Forbes Smiley and Farhad Hakimzadeh.

The article points out that for libraries,

…such thefts can be extremely difficult to notice. Detective Sergeant Vernon Rapley, a police officer with 23 years’ experience, has for the past eight years headed the Metropolitan Police’s Art and Antiques Unit.

“Book theft is very hard to quantify because very often pages are cut and it’s not noticed for years,” says Rapley. “Often we come across pages from books [in hauls of recovered property] and we work back from there.”

There is a call for libraries to take particular security measures and for honest library users to be vigilant. The article also touches upon the problem of “insider theft”:

A more recent “trusted insider” case is also one of the most shocking. In February, David Slade, a respected Bristol-based dealer and former president of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association, was jailed for 28 months for stealing 68 books worth £230,000 from Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, who had engaged him in 2001 to catalogue part of the family collection at Ascott, Buckinghamshire.

[tags]e. forbes smiley, map theft, antique maps [/tags]

David Rumsey is donating his collection of thousands of rare and historical American maps to Standford University.

Rumsey says one of the rarest maps that has been donated is Lewis & Clark’s map used during their journey through the upper Missouri and into Oregon published in 1814.

The collection of about 150,000 maps will go to Stanford Library’s Special Collections Division for preservation.

Rumsey has spent at least 30 years collecting rare and antique maps. About 18,000 of the maps digitized for online viewing at his web site http://www.davidrumsey.com.

Read the full story.

Edit: A more indepth story regarding the donation  is now available from The Imperial Valley News.

[tags]David Rumsey, antique maps, antique map collections, lewis and clark[/tags]

An article from the UK’s Investors Chronicle “Stamp on the credit misery and get collecting“, makes some interesting points about collecting items (including antique maps) in these financially uncertain times.

Another investment that is capitalising from limited supply and growing demand is antique map investing. These maps are also in finite supply. According to map marketers MapWorld about 80 per cent of the world’s antique maps have been destroyed over the years through fires, floods and natural disasters. And another 60 per cent of the remaining 20 per cent in circulation that have survived are held in public collections which makes supply that bit more constrained. This naturally means that prices have also gone up substantially.

The article also notes some general rules to follow when considering purchasing any collectable item.

[tags]antique map collecting, antique maps[/tags]

The Rocky Mountain Map Society is presenting the Eighth Annual Rocky Mountain Antique Map Fair at the Denver Central Library, 10 W. 14th Avenue Parkway, Denver, CO. Fifteen European and American dealers will show thousands of maps from the 16th through 20th centuries. Prices range from $10 to more than $30,000. Experts will be on hand to examine maps brought to the fair. Hours are 5 to 8 p.m. today and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Entrance: $5.

At 1pm on Saturday afternoon, Rocky Mountain Map Society member Tom Overton will present, The Changing Face of Colorado: County Boundaries from Statehood to the 20th Century in the Gates Room on the 5th floor of the Denver Central Library.

For more information, visit the Rocky Mountain Map Society’s web site.

[tags]Rocky Mountain Map Society, Antique Maps, Map Fairs, Annual Rocky Mountain Antique Map Fair, Antique Map Collecting[/tags]

A retired physician in Duxbury, MA, has amassed an impressive map collection over the last 20 years, some of which date back to the 1500s. Clarence (Ky) Kylander also has a web site through which he sells maps, atlases and prints from his collection, with prices ranging from $25 to $2500.

Kylander is a member of six different map collectors’ societies, including the Phillips Society of the Library of Congress and the Washington Map Society, as well as the VP of the Boston Map Society, the executive director of the Society of the History of Discoveries, and a member of the International Conference of the History of Cartography.

To learn more about Kylander and his interest in antique map collecting, read the article in the Duxbury Reporter.

[tags]antique maps, antique map collecting, Clarence Kylander[/tags]