Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
selling material. Specialist web sites are maintained by dealers and have
increasingly replaced catalogues, whilst societies market themselves on-
line. Behaviour on-line is regulated: feedback from users is needed to sell
your collection via e-Bay and secure payment facilities are required for on-
line credit-based map purchase.
5- Antiquarian map collecting
There has been a long history of antiquarian interest in the acquisition of
valuable, old, rare and beautiful maps and in particular in maps produced
from copper-engraved plates, printed and subsequently hand-coloured.
But they were also mass-produced and sufficient atlases survived in pri-
vate hands to make them affordable to richer or more discerning collectors.
It is widely accepted that the worlds of map collector and producer were
closely associated during the renaissance rediscovery of classical geo-
graphical knowledge. Atlases formed the archetypes of map collections,
grouping together disparate geographical knowledge. Expansion of pro-
duction led to an increase in collecting in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Private libraries accumulated geographical knowledge and their
collections increasingly passed into public hands: European Royal collec-
tions now form the core of major public map libraries. Sufficient atlases
survived outside public collections to fuel the development of a market
that emerged at the same time as significant disposable income was be-
coming available to collectors after the second world war.
Until mid twentieth century there were few antiquarian map collectors.
The current trade in antiquarian mapping was created by dealers who
'broke' atlases establishing an affordable market. The London firm
Francis Edwards dominated this sector of the trade in the interwar years
through to the 1960s (Scott 1999). R.V.Tooley, the firms' map specialist
became the 'grand old man of maps' and, played a significant role in
launching the collecting field through his publications.
