By ANDREA GRANAHAN
WEST COUNTY CORRESPONDENT
There is a big difference between a hoarder and a collector. A hoarder just wants things and concentrates on quantity. A hoarder will never part with anything. A collector, on the other hand, is in the pursuit of something beyond the thing itself — knowledge, perhaps.
And a collector in pursuit of quality is willing to sell or give away a piece of his collection.
For Mark Sell of Sebastopol, his map collection is a connection to history, a passion, a way to armchair travel, and sometimes a gateway to real dream journeys coming true.
Mark Sell, of Sebastopol, collects maps, globes and navigation tools. He holds his 1610 map of Nottinghameshire, England. (John Burgess/The Press Democrat)
“My first map was in fourth grade,” he recalls. He was in a summer enrichment program in Visalia, where he grew up. “I signed up for geography and our teacher gave each of us a map of the United States. That did it. I pored over that map, imagining what it would be like to cross the country.”
Years later, in 1988, he got a small RV and for six weeks took his family on that dream journey around the United States.
Sell used to manage the Bank of America in Sebastopol, but later bought into the Sebastopol Hardware Store. His interest in history has led him to volunteer at the Sturgeon Steam Saw Mill between Graton and Occidental. He has helped restore the old mill and put it in working order, and has learned blacksmithing along the way. But he has never quit collecting maps.
“The oldest map I have was a complete surprise. I bought what looked like an old Robin Hood playbill on parchment. When I took it out of its frame, concerned that the cardboard with it might be destructive to it, I discovered it was a folded map of Nottinghamshire and the town of Nottingham from 1610 made by the famous mapmaker John Speed.”
The map is on vellum, not parchment, which is why it has lasted so long. It shows no roads because there were none.
“It would take years to put a copperplate map together,” he says, “especially before longitude was determined.”
His favorite is a 1788 map of all of Captain Cook’s journeys made from Cook’s notes and soundings, using the newfangled longitudes of the day.
“The first two trips Cook made, he did without navigation. He took map makers with him and using a spyglass and a 100-foot chain, they would painfully measure and map everything. Navigation was difficult because they had no timepieces that would work at sea. A kid would turn an hourglass. Time was only as reliable as the kid’s attention.”
Sell has collected other things as he has searched for his maps. He has an old spyglass, sea clocks from different eras including a ship’s hourglass, old newspapers and sextants.
(See more photos of unusual Sonoma County collections)
He has old city maps as well. Certain ones, such as old New York City, find a ready market and he has sold some to continue to feed his collecting habit. His wife, Lena, is good-natured about his collection.
“It’s interesting. I like things to be neat and organized, but he is usually pretty good about it,” she says. “It makes it easy to buy him gifts.”
One gift she bought him was an old map of Palestine before the couple made a trip to Israel.
One of his prized maps is a map of the U.S. that actually shows the then-active Pony Express route. He has a map of Sebastopol — but not Sonoma County’s Sebastopol, the one in Crimea, and it shows the gun emplacements from the Crimean War. He has primitive maps such as those drawn by Australian aborigines to show the locations of waterholes. Those are on boomerangs, loincloths and a didgeridoo.
“Some of the cave drawings in Lascaux are actually maps,” he says.
He has three grandchildren who know granddad loves maps.
But how does he feel about GPS?
“I love it. We have put stationary stars out there to tell us where we are within a few feet. It’s amazing,” he says. “Still, when you need a bigger picture to know your choices, nothing but a map will do.”
