Press

Politics and arts come together at the thirtieth edition of Tefaf Maastricht, which opens Friday 10th of March. The British dealer in rare books and prints Daniel Crouch is furnishing a themed stand on Europe and Brexit. ​‘A joke of course, but with a serious tone to it,’ he says. Because through a variety of costly atlases and old maps he makes it clear to the public that our idea of the age-old European nation states with each their own national identity is nothing more than a myth.

Celebrating their sixth consecutive year exhibiting at the fair, Daniel Crouch Rare Books, leading maps and rare books dealer, will return to TEFAF Maastricht with an impressive selection of works including a monumental wall map of astonishing beauty, made in 1604 at the beginning of the Dutch Golden Age by Luis Texeira. Dutch world wall maps from this era are incredibly rare and this engraved map, printed on twelve sheets, is the only surviving complete example.

(CNN) — Maps can be beautiful and good ones can be great investments.

Daniel Crouch Rare Books has just issued their Catalogue III, Mapping London. Crouch is a specialist in maps and the associated types of material, such as sea charts, plans, atlases and globes. They focus on antiquarian examples, though there are a few items this time that make it into the last century. In this catalogue, Crouch has centered on one small corner of the globe, the city of London, and occasionally, a few miles of surrounding lands. Since most maps are targeted right on the city, as it follows the banks and bend in the River Thames, thumbing through this catalogue gives a bird’s eye view of how much the city has grown over the four centuries from the 15th through the 19th century. Naturally, a current map would show much greater expansion still, but London looks barely more than a large village 400 to 500 years ago.

The Art Market: sparkling results at Christie’s, online overload and 16th century Venice.
By Georgina Adam

Our pick of the highlights from this week’s fairs and auctions

CHICAGO (CBS) — In London, a rare map from an infamous period in Chicago history could bring in more than $26,000 when it goes on sale next month.

Now this is definitely one of those once in a lifetime sort of moments when a 500-year-old (!!!) map appears on the market, and what’s more it’s the first map ever to depict the New York Harbor. Come Saturday, it will be on sale at the Park Avenue Armory for an equally jaw-dropping number: $10 million, Bloomberg reports.

Even after 40 years, TEFAF never fails to delight, with enticing works of art of every material, creed and age of antiquity.

The young dealers committee of Tefaf is trying a novel way to encourage new collectors. ​“The fair is one generation old, and that generation is still very much involved. For the fair to evolve, it needs to attract more young dealers and young buyers,” says Daniel Crouch, one of the six members of the committee, which is in its second year and is chaired by Fabrizio Moretti, of Moretti Art Galleries. ​“We want to bring in more people who are familiar with our world and the diverse material we sell, but who don’t necessarily come to the fair. We realised that, with the increasing professionalisation of fundraising at museums and libraries, there is a resource that can be marshalled,” Crouch says.

Almost a year to the day after setting up on his own, antiquarian book and maps dealer Daniel Crouch opens a gallery in the heart of London’s St James’s. After a number of years working for the London books specialist Bernard Shapero, 37 year-old Daniel made his debut as an independent dealer last September in New York at the Haughtons’ International Fine Art & Antique Dealers Show.

Specialising in rare maps and atlases from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, dealer Daniel Crouch is having his inaugural exhibition at Apter Fredericks. Among the highlights is an atlas which includes the first map of the Americas, and a pair of globes (terrestrial and celestial), dating from 1640s, by the famous Dutch maker Willem Janszoon Blaeu.