Maphead_ Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks - Ken Jennings [49]
“Why the Holy Land?” I ask.
“There was a lot of stuff that was cost-effective. I’d been to Israel a few times, but the real thing was, I wanted to do something unique, something different.” While still a practicing physician, he tells me, he once presented a paper on a rare pregnancy disease. Because there were only thirty-five recorded cases in history, he became the world’s leading authority. “In other words, if you’re going to specialize, specialize as much as possible.”
“And it probably had something to do with your Jewish faith or heritage?” I venture.
“No! Why would I hang pictures of Jesus on my wall?” Sure enough, almost every map on display has a large vignette of the Crucifixion adorning Jerusalem. Many of the great early cartographers were Jewish,* but Holy Land maps were almost always made with Christian devotion in mind. “Once you become a collector”—he shrugs—“you have to keep an open mind.”
Leonard knows who his rival collectors in the Holy Land niche are: two in New York and one at the University of Jerusalem. But he avoids most of the cutthroat bidding. “A few maps were too expensive, and I’m happy to have a facsimile. I’d rather have the original, but you have to draw the line somewhere.” Not all collectors are so good at drawing that line. Typically, they get off to a fast start, scooping up the low-hanging fruit in their focus area, but the really rare items might come up for sale only once in a decade. Some collectors have spent twenty or thirty years chasing that elusive last map, only to be outbid when one finally surfaces. “Put, in capital letters: FRUSTRATING,” Ian Harvey had told me in London when I asked him to describe the lot of the map collector. “HE COULDN’T HAVE WHAT HE WANTED.”
The library walls are lined with framed portraits of great cartographers and shelves full of map books. It’s clearly a place for scholarly research, not just storage of valuables. “I spend hours in here,” says Leonard. “I look at them over and over and over.”
“The more you look at them, the more you’ll find,” agrees Phil. “I spend a lot of time studying maps with a magnifying glass.” You can’t really say that about any other collectible I can think of. The Roth-mans love art as well—there are some Renoir sketches and a small Pissarro framed nearby—but no painting is as inexhaustible as a map.
Two hundred twenty of Leonard’s favorite maps aren’t in his library at all; they hang in sliding cupboards he’s custom-built next to his bedroom closet. It’s the world’s largest collection of map neckties.
“This is magnificent!” exclaims Phil, who is also an expert on mapemblazoned miscellany (cartifacts, collectors call them). His Marin County home contains the largest collection of map jigsaw puzzles ever assembled by man.
“I’m running out of room,” says Leonard. “I need to make another hole in the wall.” He never goes anywhere without shopping for a souvenir tie printed with a local map. Sometimes he comes up dry, though—he just got back from Chile, where there wasn’t a single map tie to be found.
“That’s weird,” I respond. “I thought skinny ties were coming back!” Dead silence greets my attempt at South American geographic humor. I see now that the world’s largest array of cartographic neck-wear is nothing to joke about.
Many early maps, printed before the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, have survived the centuries in astonishingly good condition. They were printed on rag paper, made predominantly of cotton, linen, or hemp fiber, which is stronger and less acidic than the wood pulp–based papers widely used since. That’s why a Jodocus Hondius map of Asia from 1613 might still be bright and pristine, while that yellow Cathy comic strip on your parents’ fridge looks like it’s been through a nuclear holocaust. Most of these older maps will outlive us all.
It’s possible they’ll also outlive the hobby of map collecting itself. More and more collections