Arader Galleries

Arader is a famous nut-​job in the book and art world. Known also as Arader the Raider for his predatory way of acquiring merchandise. He calls himself «The World’s Greatest Book-​Breaker» meaning that he gets many of his prints by buying perfectly good and complete books that are illustrated with prints, cuts the prints out and throws out the text and binding. Most people are unaware of this practice because so few dealers will stoop that low. One of his most famous crimes against books was when he bought the Album de Croy from Sotheby’s in 2001, an exquisite hand painted book from the 1500’s and cut out all the prints. The book tells a delightful story of the history of a region in France but that story is rendered mute when you can only view one print on your wall. Here is a good account of that: archivalia​.tum​blr​.com/​p​o​st/67 965 883 771/​album-​de-​charles-​de-​croy-​was-​broken-​up-​in-​2001.
If you care about where your art comes from then try one of the many print dealers who don’t break up books.

Visiting the Arader Gallery is like a wonderful museum and treasure trove trip combined into one. The collection of maps alone make you think of swashbuckling & explorer days. I am a particular fan of their Asian works (Japanese prints — not ukiyoe). We also have an affinity for the Victorian bird prints which we’re collecting.

Antique maps have always been pretty fascinating, and lo and behold, they had a map from the early 1900s of «North and South Canada» that we picked up for a pretty bargain price. Got it framed, and now it’s a conversation piece whenever people come over.
–0.5 star for the following: I recently went in there looking for a map of Japan (We were pretty specific.) Woman working there pulls out random maps of Asia most of which were of Mainland China alone. It was kind of confusing… I wasn’t sure if they really didn’t HAVE much of maps of the tiny island nation of Japan, or if she was just being really lame and/​or lazy. It would have been rude, I think, seeing as she runs a MAP STORE, for me to comment.
Also, –0.5 star for the fact that the woman working there had NO clue that Sarah Vowell worked there in the late 90’s, and even WROTE about it in her book. «HELLO! Violet from ‘The Incredibles’, her shows on NPR, and Author of ‘Assassination Vacation’???»