Now, a cartel to protect antique books
When books are stolen, it springs into action, alerting sellers, libraries and book lovers
International
League of Antiquarian Booksellers Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of
America Global conferences on theft prevention
In Nantucket-red
trousers and loafers, the customer looked the part of an upscale antiquarian
book collector as he browsed 16th-century Italian texts on display in a
chandelier-decked showroom inside a landmark brownstone on the Upper East Side
of Manhattan.
But it was a conspicuous
outfit for a thief — moments after the man entered on that day last spring,
cameras caught him stuffing two texts worth a total of more than $20,000,
according to a bookseller, into an elegant case.
The heist appeared to
have taken months of planning, according to the booksellers at the shop, PRPH
Books. They say the man provided his name, posed as a buyer and, over time,
befriended a young shopkeeper.
The booksellers
identified the man in the video as Gabriel Hundiashvili, a former fashion
photographer.
Hundiashvili denies
stealing anything and says he does not know why a recent bulletin about the
crime issued by the New York Police Department on Twitter contains an image of
him taken by the shop’s closed-circuit camera. The Police Department says the case
is under investigation.
Using databases
In the tight community
of bibliophiles and antique book dealers, the theft is viewed not as an
audacious heist, but as something of a fool’s errand: Whenever books are
stolen, the antique book world springs into action, activating informal email
trees to alert sellers, libraries and book lovers of the stolen titles and
employing the aid of databases that log every pilfered text.
That response, those in
the field say, has stymied thieves and is helping make such thefts as rare as a
Gutenberg Bible. Reselling ill-gotten old books is almost impossible.
“We are a big family,”
Fabrizio Govi, a consultant for PRPH, said. “We have quick channels through
which we can communicate to each other. This is the first big mistake. The
second is you steal books from a gallery from the Upper East Side with cameras?
And you give your name to the people who work there? This is to me, it looks
very weird.”
Hundiashvili, who
confirmed he was the person the Police Department identified on Twitter, said
there had to be some misunderstanding.
“If I had ill intentions of doing anything to
this company, would I provide them with my real name, my phone number, my
email?” he said. “Obviously there is video footage of me all over that store,
all over that building and whatnot. Why would I do that?”
Images of Hundiashvili
were posted in September to the Twitter account of the 19th Precinct, which
covers the Upper East Side, with a request to the public for tips on his
whereabouts. The Police Department declined to explain why the bulletin was
issued since the store says it is aware of Hundiashvili’s identity.
Shortly after a reporter
contacted the police, a bookshop employee said workers were told by the police
not to share the video footage.
Wary dealers
The two books stolen
were a humanist text valued at $15,509 and palm reading text worth $4,900.
Most books in the
gallery are stored in cases, but these two pocket-size volumes were on display
in a sculptural bookcase that is also for sale. Shortly after the theft, a man
resembling the person seen in the video entered an antiquarian bookstore a few
blocks away and tried to sell the two books, claiming that he had stumbled upon
them.
Suspicious of their
provenance, the bookseller refused, according to Govi, who spoke with the other
shopkeeper.
Rare-book dealers are well versed in warning
signs that make them leery of certain sellers, said Pom Harrington, who owns a
London-based rarebooks firm named Peter Harrington. A pristinely preserved book
with an oddly humble origin story is a dead giveaway.
The Antiquarian
Booksellers’ Association of America publishes a blog describing thefts
nationwide and emails members the moment it is notified a book has been stolen,
said Susan Benne, the group’s executive director.
There are organisations
like this around the world with task forces on stolen books, and there are
global conferences on theft prevention, Benne said.
Still, sales of stolen
books do take place and many booksellers have stories of inadvertently buying
one, particularly those taken from private collectors who may not know about
the databases.
Who cares about diamonds?
There have been
instances in which the rare-book community has been powerless to recover books:
when they are taken by bibliophiles with no intention of reselling, said James
Cummins, the proprietor of James Cummins Bookseller in Manhattan. Such thefts
regularly befall library and institutional collections.
When books disappear
from the record, the loss is profound, he said. “You could lose diamonds, but a
book has knowledge, it has history. You lose that entirely,” Cummins said. “Who
cares about diamonds?”
Sitting inside the whitewashed gallery in the
ornate Upper East Side brownstone a few months after the books disappeared,
Francesca Biffi, a vice president of PRPH, was still troubled by their fate.
“You don’t know what is their destiny,” she said.
But she was comforted by
the fact that the 500-year-old books had lasted this long. “I cannot say who is
this man and why he stole the books,” she said. “I don’t know if he wants to
keep them, if he wants to sell, I really don’t know. But I am sure they will
survive.”
In late September, the
mystery seemed solved. Govi emailed a reporter: The police had told him the
books had been found. Then it deepened: The missing books had been mailed
anonymously to the 19th Precinct station house on the Upper East Side,
according to a Police Department official who did not want to be identified
because the investigation was continuing.
No arrests had yet been
made — of the man in the pink pants or anyone else.
Source | Business Line | 10 October
2016
Regards
Pralhad Jadhav
Senior Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
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