About this Item
The format is approximately 8.375 inches by 10.875 inches. 72 pages, plus cover. Catalogue subscription insert laid in. Maps. Illustrations. 511 items listed (including New Arrivals). List of Authorities Frequently Cited, and Not Among Reference Books for Sale. The cover has some wear and soiling. A focus of this catalogue is The Sixteenth Century--Maps and the Modern World. The catalogue contains the following sections: I. Rare Books and Atlases; II. The World; III. North and South America; IV. Europe; V. Africa; VI. Asia; VII. Mapping the Southeast; VIII. Ships and Harbor Views, and IX. Reference Books. Included in this remarkable compilation is item 218, highlighted as The Most Important Map in American History, being John Mitchell, "A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America, with the Roads, Distances, Limits, and Extend of the Settlements, London, 1755. This is a fascinatingly well annotated catalogue that can now serve as an invaluable reference work with information on many now seldom seen maps and related materials. Walter Graham Arader III is an American art dealer, focusing on rare maps, prints and natural history watercolors. His father, a Philadelphia businessman, former Pennsylvania Secretary of Commerce and map collector, lent his son one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and Arader began to travel the antique-show circuit. He established his business in 1974, focusing on rare maps. In The Island of Lost Maps, author Miles Harvey credits him with transforming what had been an "insular realm of aficionados," giving maps "unprecedented visibility, not only as investments. but as mass-media artifacts." Arader has brought a similar acumen to the sale of natural history prints, books, and watercolors, and he is the largest dealer of John James Audubon's highly prized double-elephant folio prints from The Birds of America. In 1981, he introduced the Arader Grading System to determine the value and significance of rare maps, prints, and books. This system evaluates items based on their conceptual importance, aesthetic quality, condition, and rarity. He also invented a method of selling by syndication, a form of retailing with an added touch of gambling. For a fixed amount, clients purchase shares in the distribution of a set of prints or watercolors. By process of lottery, numbers are drawn to determine the order in which clients make a selection. Such a method was used by Arader in the fall of 1985, when he bought the original watercolors for Pierre-Joseph Redouté s masterpiece, Les Liliacées. Sotheby's had planned to auction the flower watercolors one-by-one, but Arader created one of his syndicates and in a remarkable coup purchased the whole group with a single unchallenged bid of five million dollars. Each of his investors acquired four watercolors for a share price of $63,250. He was profiled in the October 24, 2011 issue of Forbes magazine. He is discussed by Sarah Vowell in episode 86 of This American Life, and in her book The Partly Cloudy Patriot, and by Simon Garfield in his book, On The Map. Arader owned galleries in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, New York City, NY, and St. Helena, California.
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