The Aardvark Blog

Sale expectations
24/01/2014

Aardvark's first ever sale is now over half way , and whilst I cannot say that we have been deluged with customers, we have had a pretty solid flow through on most days. On Sunday we were lucky enough to welcome fellow bookseller Anna Dreda, who has a much loved bookshop in Much Wenlock. She had also chosen this month to have her first ever sale, and was pleased that it had brought in both existing customers and some people new to the shop.

Notwithstanding the sales we both joked that it would be another ten years before we had another one. Anna had had a very strong Christmas in the bookshop in 2013, and it is good to hear some positive news amongst the usual gloom about the future of bookshops.

This week I have been tied up with working on two of the exhibitions that we are staging later in the year. I have now nearly finished selecting the posters for 'Under the Hammer', the fascinating exhibition of original sale room posters that we have scheduled for April. These posters date from between 1919 and 1945, and they represent an extraordinary history of this area ( the company John Norton operated between Leominster and Shrewsbury and as far east as Tenbury Wells. Also this week I have been talking to a collector about including part of his collection in our map exhibition in May.

I am very glad to say that he has agreed, and we will therefore be showing maps from four substantial collections. Included in the last collection are a number of sets of estate maps from the first half of the nineteenth century. These are always fascinating, and are in a sense unique documents. I will be  revealing more about the exhibition 'Mapping Wales and the Council of the Marches', nearer the time.