Graham Arader

W. Graham Arader III is the foremost dealer of rare maps, prints and natural history watercolors within the United States, if not the world. He established his business in 1974, bringing a high-charged, trading floor mentality to the genteel and rather dusty print market. His business began with maps and Arader is credited with creating a market where formerly there was none, and of bringing the world of cartography to the collector and not just the purview of academics and librarians. In "The Island of Lost Maps", author Miles Harvey credits him with transforming what had been an "insular realm of aficionados," giving maps "unprecedented visibility, not only as investments... but as mass-media artifacts." [Harvey 2000, pp.55-6.] Arader has brought a similar acumen to the sale of natural history prints, books and watercolors and is the largest dealer of John James Audubon’s highly-prized double-elephant folio prints from The Birds of America.

His success is founded upon a keen eye for quality as well as innovative sales techniques. In 1981, he established the Arader Grading System [Creswell 1981] to establish the worth and importance of rare maps, prints and books, and as defined by conceptual importance, aesthetic quality, condition and rarity. This system, combined with “original color” (as opposed to the modern hand-coloring of prints), has become Arader’s by-word for superiority.

Arader also invented a method of selling by syndication, a form of retailing with an added touch of gambling. For a fixed amount, clients purchase shares in the distribution of a set of prints or watercolors. By process of lottery, numbers are drawn to determine the order in which clients make a selection. Such a method was used by Arader in the fall of 1985, when he stunned the world of art auctions by buying the original watercolors for Pierre-Joseph Redouté’s masterpiece, "Les Liliacées". Sotheby’s planned to auction off the flower watercolors one-by-one, but Arader created one of his sydicates and, in a remarkable coup, purchased the whole group with a single, unchallenged bid of five million dollars. Each of his investors acquired four watercolors for a share price of $63,250. [Reif 1985]

Sometimes regarded as a maverick, Arader has been described as “abrasive and solicitous, argumentative and engaging, unscholarly yet imposingly knowledgeable, charming when he absolutely needs to be and flatly rude when it suits him…” [Singer 1987, p.44] His forceful and highly competitive personality has at once lured clients, as well as rankled many of Arader’s competitors. Arader's ethics have, at times been called into question. Early in his career he engaged heavily in bookbreaking, and in 1983 the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America booted him out for what they deemed to be his negligent handling of another dealer's property. [Harvey]

By his own account, Arader's career began while he was still a Yale University undergraduate. He played No. 1 singles on the varsity squash team for three years, and spent much of the rest of his time at Yale exploring the magnificent map holdings of the Sterling Memorial Library and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The curator of the Yale map collection, Alexander O. Vietor, became his mentor and Arader proudly boasts that he is “the only guy in history who used Yale as a trade school.” [Harvey 2000, p.54] In 1972, he received a B.A. degree in economics and the four-time All-American squash champion began a short-lived career as a tree surgeon. Two years later, his father, a Philadelphia businessman and map collector, lent his son one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and Arader began to travel the antique-show circuit. From small beginnings, selling maps out of the back of a station wagon, Arader has built a multi-million dollar business. He currently owns galleries in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston and Denver. Arader is a former trustee of the Yale Library Associates and South Street Seaport Museum, New York.

Arader is discussed by Sarah Vowell in episode 86 of This American Life.

Publications

*Cresswell, Donald H. (ed.). The Arader Grading System for Maps, Books and Prints (July, 1981) Catalogue 28.
*Arader, W. Graham. Native Grace: Prints of the New World, 1590-1876. West Palm Beach, 1999.

External links

* [http://aradergalleries.com/ Arader Galleries]

References

*Gili, Oberto. "Main Line Impressions," House and Garden (March, 1991): 150-153, 186.
*Harvey, Miles. "The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime". New York : Random House, 2000. (ISBN 0-375-50151-7, ISBN 0-7679-0826-0)
*Kennedy, Hugh. "Original Color". New York: Nan A. Talese, 1996. (ISBN 0-385-47736-8) A novel by a former employee of Arader's. It is a "roman à clef". The "boss from Hell", Nelson Albright, is based on Arader.
*Patterson, Jerry E. “The Connoisseur,” Town and Country (November, 1992).
*Patton, Phil. “Arader is up again! And his galleries are in full bloom,” Smithsonian (December 1989): 86-94.
*Reif, Rita. “Redoute watercolors auctioned to syndicate,” The New York Times (November 21, 1985).
*Singer, Mark. “Profiles (W. Graham Arader III),” The New Yorker (November 30, 1987): 44-97.