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In this section we gather together information for the collector. We offer advice on building and housing your maps and books, provide biographies of mapmakers, and a glossary of bookselling terms, and we draw together some common themes that span our collections, and tell stories of the histories of exploration and cartography.
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The Thames Frost Fairs
From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, Europe experienced several periods of cooling known as Little Ice Ages. Many factors have been proposed to explain these dips in temperature, and their effects were likewise manifold. One of the most well-loved and well-documented results was the phenomenon of the Frost Fair.
The latest news
Inside the secretive world of the art-fair vetting committee
3 September 2021
Before a fair opens, experts check that every work for sale is exactly what the gallerists say it is
How to
A guide to your collection
Are you new to collecting maps? Would you like guidance on how to handle the books and maps in your collection?
From the glossary
Gauffered edges
A pattern tooled on gilt edges of book.
French: Tranches ciselées
German: ziselierter Schnitt
Mapmaker biographies
APIANUS, Petrus
Born in Saxony as Peter Bienewitz, he studied at the University of Leipzig from 1516 to 1519, where he adopted the Latinised version of his German name, Petrus Apianus. In 1519, he moved to Vienna, where he was part of the second Vienna school of cartography, which included Georgius Tannstetter and Johannes Cuspinianus. He then moved again to Landshut, where he produced the Cosmographicus liber in 1524, an extremely popular work on astronomy and navigation which underwent thirty reprints. Based on Ptolemy, it contains paper instruments called volvelles, which Apianus would use so effectively in his work that they are sometimes known as Apian wheels.