Press

All the best books begin with a map.

Daniel Crouch brainstormed this idea with daughter over a pint in a pub. Shortly afterwards, the collection of fictional cartography – I wisely started with a map! – began with gusto.

One of the finest collections of maps of non-existent places, the entire exhibition is to be sold en bloc. As The Times reports:

“We think we’ve done something quite important and fun”.

Frieze Masters is an art fair that brings attendees “face to face with millennia of art history,” and this year’s edition was no exception. It drew in buyers and institutions with a deliberate and conscientious collecting style, presenting artwork from Manet to the Palaeolithic period.

Find our Alice in Wonderland globe, complete works of Jules Verne, and the full article here.

For Frieze Masters this year, our exhibition I wisely started with a map! traced over 2,700 years of fictitious cartography, featuring maps of much-beloved lands like Middle-Earth, Lilliput and Oz.

We created a magical, Narnia-like stand, complete with wooden doors covered in fur coats à la The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 

Read about the official reaction here.

From a first edition of Daniel Defoe’s Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, to a world map by Herman Moll, our stand at Frieze Masters this year included:

• Dante’s infernal survey of hell
• The first map of Atlantis, printed in 1665
• A map of ‘Poyais’ created by the fraud Gregor MacGregor, who convinced hundreds of people to invest in and settle in this fictional place
• The first printed map of Oz,  from Munchkinland to the Emerald City
• F. Scott Fizgerald’s map of East Egg, West Egg, and the Valley of Ashes

Read the full article here.

With Frieze Masters 2024 fast approaching, Daniel Crouch Rare Books has been featured in Country Life. Huon Mallalieu writes:

“Daniel Crouch, the London antiquarian map dealer, has created an exhibition of the cartography of fictional worlds over 2,700 years, ‘featuring maps of such magical lands as Middle Earth, Lilliput, Oz… there and back again’.  

“Tolkien’s Middle Earth as portrayed by Pauline Baynes in 1970 is key; as the author said: ‘I wisely started with a map, and made the story fit (generally with meticulous care for distances). The other way about lands one in confusions and impossibilities, and in any case, it is weary work to compose a map from a story.”

Formally the China in Print fair, Firsts have taken the Hong Kong international book fair under their umbrella for this coming December. It will be held in the Hong Kong Maritime Museum from 6 to 8 December.

Daniel Crouch Rare Books will be bringing the first and only Dutch edition of the first atlas of China made in Europe – Novus Atlas Sinensis from 1655 by Jean Blaeu, an exceptional work based on the travels of Father Martino Martini (1614-1661), a Jesuit missionary in China. We will also be bringing Cornelius De Jode’s rare circular map of China, China Regnum, from 1593, which shows the kingdom of China with some intriguing illustrations of East Asian life.

Read the full article here.

Frieze Masters is upon us next month. In anticipation, Daniel Crouch was interviewed for Frieze Magazine on changes in cartography, London’s heterogenous expertise, and how the city is no longer the ‘worst culinary destination on earth’.

Click here to read the interview.

The Melbourne Rare Book Fair, taking place from July 25-27 at The University of Melbourne, is now in its 53rd Edition.

Alongside other international exhibitors, Daniel Crouch Rare Books will be flying in from London to present the only known example of Petrus Schenk’s wall map of Asia. This hand-coloured engraved wall map, printed on nine joined sheets is offered for $285,000 (£150,000).

Find the whole article by the Antiques Trade Gazette here.

A chance find at a car-boot sale turned out to be a unique manuscript survey, made by a royal geographer, of the Oxfordshire village where Daniel Crouch lives, as Carla Passino discovers.

Read the full article from Country Life here.

Highlights of our stand at the 56th California Antiquarian Book Fair included a 1482 Ulm Ptolemy and a set of pocket globes.

These are featured in this article from the Liberty Times of Taiwan, written by Fang-Ling.

Mercator’s 1595 map of the world, in fine original colour, was one of the top ten sales from the recent AbeBooks.co.uk quarter.

Daniel Crouch comments that this map is “The first edition of the first map in the first atlas to be called such”.

Read more about the map here.

TEFAF Maastricht, the European Fine Art Foundation’s annual March fair, marks the celebratory kickoff to the season.

The high values of works headed to this year’s fair indicate that sellers are keen to bring the prestige. They include a Vincent van Gogh portrait priced at $4.95 million; Artemisia Gentileschi’s “The Penitent Magdalene,” for upward of $5 million; and four volumes of John James Audubon’s rare book, “Birds of America,” priced at $12.5 million.

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