Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
The trade was not a neutral participant in this process. Dealers published
topics seeking to attract new money to the emerging map market (see
Baynton-Williams 1969). Some dealers were able to inflate prices in a ris-
ing market, notably the largest map dealer in the twentieth century,
W.Graham Arader III, who now enjoys a turnover in excess of $10million
a year, operates a chain of galleries across the USA and whose fortune
exceeds $100million. Meanwhile anecdotes reflect nostalgia for the days
when their collections could be acquired for little money on market stalls.
By the mid 1990s concerns were being expressed, and especially in the
USA, about the limited supply of new antiquarian material for the private
collector.
5.3 The regulated cult of the expert
The new collector of antiquarian mapping reads about appropriate skills
and behaviour in journals, web sites and instructional collecting topics.
Dealers' edicts reveal the values of hegemonic map collecting practice. A
remarkable sense of social regulation and cultural class emerges from this
process, centered on deference to the expert.
The literature venerates the 'grand old men': biographies, anecdotes and
even novels create myths about eccentrics in the trade, be they the raffish
but charming figures from the past like R.V.Tooley, contemporary dealers
like Graham Arader III (see Kennedy 1996), or tales of specialist collec-
tors (e.g atlas collector Roger Baskes (see Baskes 1996)).
The ability to verify authenticity and catalogue a map are important skills
for the collector to learn. Carto-bibliographies mark and encourage new
collecting areas by establishing targets at which collectors can aim. Few
antiquarian collectors have the time to develop skills in these areas, they
rely on experts. Skills almost become a form of alchemy: customers'
wishes are satisfied by the dealer tracking down the object of desire and
making it available to the collector. The myth of 'the discovery' is a power-
ful force, collectors' tales abound in which a 'new find' is unearthed in a
dusty library, or appears on the market, is recognised by the cognescenti
e.g. Brenchley (1988). Dealers' skills in divining cartographic rarities
allow them to maintain their best 'clients'. The hunt and knowledge com-
bine to evoke expertise, novelty and a focus for story telling.
