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Monday, September 12, 2005

VERY HANDS-ON


"The problem for dealers is not so much selling as finding the really nice things," E. Forbes Smiley III told a New York Times reporter in an article about the hot market in old maps. E. Forbes, himself a dealer, seems to have found the really nice things by going to the libraries they’re in, taking out his X-Acto knife , and stealing them.

A few months ago, he dropped a blade and left it behind him on the floor of Yale’s rare book library. When a security guard at the library caught up with him, it became apparent that Smiley’s jacket was crammed with fine old maps. His haul that day would have been worth almost a million dollars had he not been caught.









This is the sort of American map Smiley dealt in. It shows the area in Massachusetts where Smiley is building a new modular house for himself. Here’s a Boston Herald story about it:


PUTTING HIS NEW HOME ON THE MAP

Even facing 60 years in the slammer , accused map bandit E. Forbes Smiley has told builders of his mod Martha's Vineyard pad to keep working. Smiley, who was arraigned this week on charges of stealing rare maps from a Yale University library, hired a hip New York architect to build him a home in Chilmark. But instead of the usual ostentatious island getaway, Smiley and his wife, Lisa A. Benson-Smiley, opted for a groovy modular home built mostly off site and brought by boat to the couple's wooded lot. At the time of Smiley's arrest, the 2,500-square-foot home was about two-thirds done, said architect Craig Kim of Resolution: 4 Architecture. ''We haven't heard from them, but the contractor has informed me that the Smileys want to finish the house." Kim wouldn't say what the couple paid, but he said similar jobs have cost about $200 per square foot. The revered map collector, who was snared June 8 after a librarian at Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library found an X-Acto knife blade on the floor near where he was sitting, hired Kim's firm after reading about an international award it had won for its prefab creations. ''They were very hands-on during the design process," Kim said, ''but I don't know if we're going to hear from them again."


Yeah, that sounds like he’s brazening it out, but he was “so nervous during his hearing” the other day that “he misstated his age.” UD couldn’t find a photo of him, but the paper describes him as “a balding bespectacled man dressed in a sports coat, yellow tie and khaki pants.”



Here’s a picture that has helped put Smiley’s more likely new home on the map.
Posted at: 9/12/2005 08:56:00 AM