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The enduring appeal of beautifully-produced atlases, books and maps is seen in the launch of Mayfair-based Daniel Crouch Rare Books’ new website, which has been created as an archive of the exquisite rare and antique printed artworks that have passed through the company.

Maps offer slices of the history of our ever-changing capital and Daniel Crouch has myriad rare examples on offer, says Godfrey Barker.

Mayfair based Daniel Crouch Rare Books has launched a new website, created in collaboration with design agency William Joseph.

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 Rudimentum Novitiorum, 1475, centred on the Holy Land, is the world’s first printed map (all previous being manuscripts). From: crouchrarebooks.com

Resolved to read more this year? Ianthe Butt finds much to tempt in London’s quirkiest independent bookstores.

Fine art buying has long been the province of wealthy connoisseurs and international collectors, keen on indulging their passion and untroubled by cost and potential profit.

According to Jonathan Potter, doyen of British antique map dealers, “a collection of London maps alone would involve hundreds of different publications regardless of variant editions of one map”. There are small-scale maps, showing the Cities of London and Westminster in the context of the surrounding counties; there are sectional maps and ward plans; there are bird’s eye panoramas; there are large-scale surveys, giving streets and houses; and there are descriptive maps and diagrammatic plans, such as Booth’s 1889 Map of London Poverty or Harry Beck’s classic 1932-33 Underground Railways of London.

Rare maps and atlases have an enduring appeal and can offer a safe haven for your money.

Catalogue II from Daniel Crouch Rare Books.

Our diarist Freya Simms offers her fortnightly reflections on her favourite London haunts

Daniel Crouch Rare Books, Thursday, 03 November 2011 – Saturday, 12 November 2011.