Miscellaneous

I am sitting in our new Denver branch, The Philadelphia Print Shop West, just a week after our "Grand Opening." We had a great party with lots of enthusiastic visitors, and my partner Don Cresswell was able to come to Denver to help with the opening and see how the new space worked out.


The shop space has turned out quite nicely, with everything easily viewed and lots of light. We haven't been here long enough that a lot of people are coming here specially to see us, but we have had good foot traffic and I am looking forward to the Christmas season. It is certainly interesting opening this branch, for it has been a long time since we were anything but a very established business. Starting up a new shop is both exciting and scary. However, so far I'm having fun!

Though I have been rather irregular of late in terms of keeping this blog up-to-date, it did get a nice mention in an interesting Interior Design blog written by Sharon Harlon. She put up a post on 40 Antique Shopping blogs. I have enjoyed looking at the other antiques blogs she listed and, of course, it is always nice to get a plug...

And then I was also surprised and pleased that this blog was selected as one of the Best 50 Antiques Blogs on the Guide to Art Schools web site. This site is designed to assist prospective art students and it is great that the authors of the site are interested in my blog and antiques in general. It is a common complaint among antique dealers that the "young" are not interested in antiques, but this shows that this is not true. This shows that antiques can appeal to all ages if presented in the right way.

One other blog I came across recently of interest is "Franky's Scripophily BlogSpot," which concerns antique share certificates. Something I never realized is how many of these certificates depict maps. The blogger, Franky Leeuwerck, has put up a number of interesting posts on the subject of maps on share certificates. Worth checking out...

One final subject I wanted to mention is my great pleasure in now being in proximity to the Rocky Mountain Map Society. The Print Shhop has been a member for years, but now I am able to get to know its many members and attend the lectures. Earlier this month there was a terrific lecture on Alexander von Humboldt by Dr. Imre Josef Demhardt. The membership of this society is very active and many members are extremely knowledgeable about maps, especially those of Colorado and the American West. I will write this up more extensively down the road, but I will mention that in the works is a joint project for July 2012 between the Rocky Mountain Map Society, the Denver Public Library, the University of Denver, and the Texas Map Society, which will include a map symposium followed by a reprise of the Map Fair of the West. Lots of exciting stuff going on out here in Denver...