Antiquarian map and rare book dealer Kenneth Nebenzahl died last month at the age of 92, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. The author of numerous book about antique maps and map history, most recently (as far as I can tell) Mapping the Silk Road and Beyond: 2,000 Years of Exploring the East (Phaidon, 2011), Nebenzahl also founded the Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr., Lectures in the History of Cartography, in memory of his son; several of said lecture series have been published by the University of Chicago Press. His obituary. [Tony Campbell]
Tag: map dealers
William Reese, 1955-2018
New Haven rare book dealer William Reese died earlier this month at the age of 62; he’d been suffering from prostate cancer. Reese, who founded his eponymous company in 1975, is a familiar name to map collectors; both his first significant sale and his last sale, according to the New York Times obituary, were cartographic in nature. [Tony Campbell]
Previously: Intact Atlas, Asking 165 Large; Reese Donates $100K to Yale for Map Digitization; Connecticut Public Radio on Forbes Smiley Sentence.
Map Dealer Carole Spack Profiled
Last month the MetroWest Daily News profiled Framington, MA map dealer Carole Spack of Original Antique Maps, whose path to the business sounds rather familiar: “Six years ago, she bought several 150-year-old maps of Worcester County showing towns that were later submerged when the area was flooded to create the Quabbin Reservoir, where she often hikes. Intrigued by their detailed evocation of a vanished time, Spack has since acquired 2,000 rare maps ranging from Colonial America to rural China all the way to hand-colored engravings of the ‘Geography of the Heavens’ by an obscure early-19th century astronomer.” [WMS]
‘I Have Been Paid to Do a Hobby’
On 12 May map dealer Jonathan Potter gave a talk for the Maps and Society lectures at the Warburg Institute. A précis of that talk, “A Map Dealer’s Reflections on the Last Forty-Five Years,” is now available online. [WMS]
Encountering Map Dealers: Hudson, Arader
Atlas Obscura profiles map collector and dealer Murray Hudson. “Today, Murray Hudson owns what is said to be the largest private collection of for-sale antique maps, prints and globes in the world. His collection, held in Halls, Tennessee, contains, in addition to some 24,000 maps, over 6700 books, 2690 prints, and 760 globes.”
Last month the Wall Street Journal’s Ralph Gardner, Jr. reported on his visit to the Arader Galleries; it’s very much a first-time-experience kind of narrative that is noteworthy for the complete absence of Graham Arader (except in the comments), whose presence usually looms quite large in stories about map collecting. [via]
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