REFERENCE BOOKS

The serious study of antique maps, prints and atlases depends on a body of specialist reference literature that has accumulated over more than a century of collecting and scholarship. Without access to the standard bibliographies, price guides, auction records and monographic studies, it is difficult to attribute, date, authenticate or value material with any confidence. This section of the catalogue brings together the reference books most useful to collectors and researchers working in the fields in which Antique Print & Map Room specialises.

Cartobibliography — the systematic description and study of printed maps — has produced a substantial body of literature since the late nineteenth century. The foundational works of Tooley, Koeman, Burden and their successors have established the descriptive standards and attribution frameworks that the trade and scholarship depend upon. Tooley’s Dictionary of Mapmakers, in its successive editions, remains an essential starting point for identifying the engravers, publishers and cartographers responsible for individual maps; Koeman’s Atlantes Neerlandici provides the definitive account of Dutch atlas publishing; Burden’s The Mapping of North America is indispensable for that field. Copies of these works in good condition are genuinely useful tools, and earlier editions are themselves collectible.

Auction catalogues constitute a different kind of reference resource. The major auction houses — Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Bonhams and their predecessors — have been selling antique maps and prints since the eighteenth century, and their catalogues, particularly from the landmark sales of the twentieth century, provide both descriptive information and a historical record of what the market has valued and at what prices. Annotated copies — with hammer prices written in — are especially useful, providing a pricing database that is otherwise difficult to reconstruct.

Dealer catalogues from specialist firms occupy an intermediate position: they are produced to sell material, but the best of them contain original research, high-quality illustration and descriptive information not available elsewhere. Catalogues from firms with a long history in the trade — both in Australia and internationally — document the movement of significant pieces through the market and sometimes record provenance information that cannot be recovered from any other source.

Monographic studies of individual cartographers, publishers, illustrators or subject areas provide the depth that general reference works cannot. A study of Blaeu’s atlas production, a catalogue raisonne of Piranesi’s etchings, a monograph on the natural history illustrations of John Gould — these are the tools that allow serious collectors and researchers to go beyond surface attribution and understand the material in its full historical and artistic context.

The reference books offered here have been selected for their practical utility to collectors and researchers working with the kind of material Antique Print & Map Room handles. They range from general introductions suitable for those new to the field to highly specialised monographs of use only to those with advanced knowledge of a particular area. Condition varies, as it will with working reference copies, but all are described accurately and offered at prices that reflect their usefulness rather than their scarcity alone.