EGN NEWS DESK
Among the most typical entry factors to cartophilia are representations of the place the collectors have set foot in actual life. For New Yorkers keen to spend, say, about $280,000 on a 1770s map of town, they’ll research how “Brookland Parish” has misplaced all traces of its pastoral roots but maintained Colonial-era place names like Red Hook and Flatbush.
“There’s a lot that’s recognizable, but there’s a lot that’s completely different, it simply sucks you in,” stated Matthew Edney, a professor of geography specializing within the historical past of cartography on the University of Southern Maine, affiliated with the college’s Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education. He added that at instances, “the previous is a overseas nation.”
J. C. McElveen, a retired lawyer in Maryland who owns about 1,400 maps courting again to the sixteenth century, stated that considered one of his treasures is just a few years previous. His spouse, Mary, made him a customized map out of recent maps, exhibiting the place they’ve lived and traveled for many years. “You have a look at these,” he stated, “and reminiscences are triggered.”
Tania Rossetto, a professor of cultural geography on the University of Padua, retains a recent map of Italy on her youngsters’s bed room wall. It serves, she stated, as “a gathering place the place our fingers hint reminiscences and desires of household journeys made, and to be made.”
Dennis M. Gurtz, a monetary planner in suburban Maryland who owns about 1,000 maps courting to the 1590s, warns that collections can begin deceptively small. But then, after maybe three purchases, the “previous map pox” kicks in, and the buying sprees start. “Be very cautious,” he stated. Severe cartophilia is diagnosable when wall area runs out and the consumers begin squirreling away maps in storage. That second is “an important inflection level,” stated Michael Buehler, the founding father of Boston Rare Maps.
Svenskt Tenn’s new cupboard, sheathed within the 1870s map of Stockholm, pays homage to the wanderlust of the corporate’s leaders. Ms. Ericson and her husband, Sigfrid, a sea captain, globe trotted for design inspiration whereas bringing house souvenirs, together with vintage maps. Mr. Frank and his Finnish-born spouse, Anna, settled in Sweden after escaping from Nazi persecution in Vienna and likewise spent years in New York. Mr. Ahlden, Svenskt Tenn’s curator, stated that Ms. Ericson preferred to paraphrase a quote from Saint Augustine: “The world is a ebook, and people who keep house are studying just one web page.”
