It’s been a while since we updated everyone on the continuing development of the Antique Dealer Project Interactive Map Website. The website, as we hope you will know, is being constantly updated with new dealerships, by our fantastic group of data input volunteers, and the project team of course – see www.antiquetrade.leeds.ac.uk
There are now more than 4,100 dealers in the website, trading over the period 1900 to 2000 – and as you can see from the screen-shot below, there are a number of interesting clusters of dealerships emerging. The long ‘bar’ at the bottom of the screen-shot is the ‘slider bar’ that you can move backwards and forwards with the computer cursor on the actual website itself to change the parameters of the dates that the map illustrates – the picture below had been set at dates between 1900 and 2000 when the screen-shot was taken.
Antique Dealer Project Interactive Map Website – UK and European based dealers 1900-2000.
For the actual webpage click – www.antiquetrade.leeds.ac.uk
Of course, the Map of Britain is still far from complete, and we need to add many more dealerships before we can start to analyse the data and begin to get a clearer picture of the changing geography of the British Antiques Trade over the course of 100 years…but there are some fascinating developments illustrated in the Map so far.
The Map website also allows you to focus in closer, to see how the antique dealerships are located at lower levels of the map – right down to street level. You can also take a look at the patterns of dealerships in particular locations at particular periods in the 20th century. The screen-grab below, for example, shows the patterns of dealerships in the South of Britain in the period 1900 to 1940.
Antique Dealers Project Interactive Map Website. South of Britain 1900-1940.
For the actual webpage click – www.antiquetrade.leeds.ac.uk
The map also has quite a lot of specific biographical data associated with various antique dealerships – these are also constantly updated as new data is added by the teams of volunteers. Below is an example of a street-level section of the Map, focused on London with the date parameters of 1900-1935. The red dot on the map is the location of the dealer Robert Partridge, in New Bond Street, with the information on the antique dealer R.W. Partridge opened up on the left side of the screen.
Antique Dealer Interactive Map – R.W Partridge data opened up.
For the actual webpage click – www.antiquetrade.leeds.ac.uk and R.W. Partridge
The information in the Interactive Map on the 1,000s of antiques dealers already added, includes their various locations in the UK, and elsewhere if they had branches in other countries (such as the USA for example), and also includes images of the exteriors and interiors of the shops (if we have them) at various points in their history.
Here’s the screen-shot from the entry for Phillips of Hitchin, the well-known dealership that was established in 1884.
Antique Dealers Project Interactive Map. Phillips of Hitchin page.
For the actual webpage click www.antiquetrade.leeds.ac.uk/Phillips of Hitchin
As you can see, above, the data on each dealership includes locations, trading names of the firm, people associated with the firm, various trade memberships, various ‘classifications’ (these are from the Trade Directories and etc) and also how the dealers described themselves (in their publicity) at various times. Eventually we also hope to build the sections of the website that will track the objects bought and sold by the various dealers….but at present we are concentrating on filling the map with the locations of antique dealers over the 100 year period that the Map focuses on.
We hope that this brief overview of the on-going status of the Antique Dealer Project Interactive Map will encourage you to take a look at the Map website, and see what you can discover. And do keep your eye on the developments!
Mark
antiquedealersblog 
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