The Collector Becomes a Seller
- By Bruce McKinney
Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark
By Bruce McKinney
On December 2nd, at Bonham's in New York, material long prized goes to auction. This is my second auction in as many years of important personal book collections. This next sale is The American Experience: 1630 - 1890, 340 items relating to the colonization of North America, the emergence of the American colonies, the forming of the United States and the opening of the west. In the November issue of AE Monthly I'll write about the collection. This month I'm writing about its origins and providing an overview.
The impetus to collect may spring to life full grown or develop from ideas and memories planted decades earlier. There is no right or wrong about this. Collections, mine included, are to a great extent simply ideas that take physical form; the why we want and even what we want often beyond our understanding. Such collections, although logical, invariably have emotional roots that are difficult to explain but important to understand. In the book business obsessed collectors are an important element in the field and if anything I say can further illuminate the path to or for them this exercise in explanation is well worth the effort.
Not surprisingly, collectors, while deeply involved in their subjects, can often better explain the what than the why of their collecting. And because collecting has an emotional basis, as collectors change, so too do their collections. This is the reason I'm now selling. My focus, once the broad American perspective, is now finely focused on the Hudson River valley and the State of New York. In the fourth quarter of my life I'm now able to collect that which I first pursed with only limited success when young.
For me collecting has always had an internal logic. In my early life too much was in motion. In history I found stability and in time began to collect evidence of its constant change. If the rest of life was less certain the durability of changing historical perspective provided a mountain top view that made other change relative and understandable. It was a great and early discovery and became an enduring part of my life. In this way I found my way to books, and books a place in my life.
This collecting is of course endlessly complex. There is no one way nor even any right way to do it, every direction taken a unique combination of interest, opportunity and capability. But if the how and why of collecting is complicated the dispersal of collections is something different altogether. We collectors reach the decision to disperse by many routes but eventually discover that we all exit more or less together: bequeathing, ignoring or selling; the paths to outright sale as narrow as the paths to acquisition are broad. Sell it yourself, sell to dealers or consign to auction.
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The Collector Becomes a Seller
- By Bruce McKinney
Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark
For this, my second auction, I've consigned to Bonham's who have been studying my American collection for months and preparing descriptions and images for inclusion in a hard-bound catalogue due to be released in late October. Just as a lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client I long ago recognized that the organizing of a collection to sell requires intelligent, dispassionate perspective and description that are best provided by they who sell rather than they who own. To ensure impartiality I have, from the outset, ceded control of estimates to the house. I have asked only that the what, when, and from whom purchased details are included in the descriptions. In selling material I have valued I do not seek confirmation that I bought well or wisely. I'll return it to the market in the same spirit I acquired it - with great interest but no specific expectation. I understand the estimates will be consistently below what I paid ten to twenty years ago. The auction would not be interesting otherwise.
I am of course hopeful of a good outcome but if there is one, it will be overall. Some items will sell for a song while others do well. In either case the market will render a decision. I will not intrude with reserves that protect the lots from rejection. The material is extremely good, often exemplary, more than half purchased from or through the William Reese Company.
Now as I write this piece the collection is in the hands of Christina Geiger, Director of Books and Manuscripts in New York and two cataloguers, Adam Stackhouse and Matthew Haley, who together are creating a coherent narrative and telling the story of an emerging continent, whose boundaries and salient characteristics are, as the collection begins in 1630, yet to be fully described. In the collection what was then known is described in the different languages of the explorers as their backers and investors angle for control. The Dutch, English, Spanish and French all seeking, from great remove, to control by words what they barely comprehend, a geography two and a half times as large as Europe, itself still an incomplete idea. These early books both convey the story and suggest the posting of flags, the "hey we're here" implications that buttress aspirations and claims, the "we don't know what we have but we have it" perspective.
In the progression of the material, always in date order, the British become established in America, the French in Canada and the Spanish in Mexico. Development and control then becomes chess on a grand scale. For the home countries it is a losing game although it will take time to play out. Ultimately the increasingly ungrateful explorers, settlers and pioneers of America become its proprietors and demand independence, an outcome as inevitable as the timing is uncertain. Such large places are ungovernable without consent of the governed. We know this today. In breaking away, the Americans strike first, next the Canadians and then the Mexicans; the absence of cooperation and the leeway to govern locally mostly determining the inevitable divorces.
With the coming of the 19th century, industrial development, the spread of literacy and the suppression of fatal illness together make it possible for the landless indigent to reach American shores and find, in its vastness, a place to settle and prosper. This leads to the final portion of this collection, the western advance.
Through the century accounts, explanations, perspectives, maps and illustrations are transformed. Some books tell us of discovery. Others confirm common knowledge. More information is needed; more is gathered, and more distributed. Literacy, the lucky possession of a few at the turn of the century becomes the widely held essential skill of an America moving from farm to factory, from country to city. In the explosion of literacy, in the proliferation of printed material, we see the confirmation that more people can read and that they want to read more.
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The Collector Becomes a Seller
- By Bruce McKinney
A Two Years Journal in New York
In the same century transportation is extended, the speeds increasing, the time needed to travel always less. The population, that in 1800 lives on farms, is freed by rising yields and mechanization to move to cities, new places now the hubs of transportation networks that move food, fuel and construction material from ever greater distances to cities where the American industrial revolution, in the presence of population and transportation, will lead America to become an important world power by the end of the century and world leader in the 20th century. In all this, the printed word has its say and its place.
Altogether its a remarkable story.
So the Bonham's team proceeds apace. They have been working for months. Auctions may seem to the outsider to be a one day affair but are more accurately described as graduation ceremonies celebrating months of work.
This month, in this the third video segment relating to the upcoming sale, Christina brings us into the gathering interstices of the approaching sale. The material. The place. The moment. As of October 1st there are 64 days to go. Material goes into boxes, some on the way to previews, some simply to decamp from the cataloguing carrels in San Francisco for transit to showcases in New York.
The catalogue comes into view and the luxury of time disappears into the drumbeat of countdown.
Click here to sign up for a copy of the hardbound catalogue to be released in late October.
This month Bonham's has prepared another installment of their ongoing presentation on the preparation of the sale. Click here to view it.
Adam Stackhouse and I will be in Bonham's booth at the Seattle Book Fair over the weekend of the 9th and 10th. Come by to say hello.
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