Mapmaker to the Tsars: the Lithographic Studio of A. Il’in, St. Petersburg
Library of Congress Junior Fellows made surprising discoveries in the summer of 2012 while looking for books from the Yudin Collection, the largest private Russian library in the West. Maggie Burke and Caitlin Oakley, at the time recent graduates of the College of William & Mary, and Meredith Doubleday, then entering her senior year at the University of Rochester, focused on works by the once prominent mapmaking firm of A. Il’in, founded in St. Petersburg in 1859. Working with Barbara Dash, a librarian in the Rare Materials Section, the students used Yudin’s own handwritten catalog, Library of Congress card catalogs, and information from Russian libraries to identify all manner of publications produced by Il’in’s firm, including Yudin’s copy of the rare, color-illustrated coronation album of Czar Alexander III and his young wife, Empress Mariia Feodorona. Just as surprising a discovery was the personal connection of one of the students with cartographer Il’in’s American descendants. In the presentation, Il’in’s great granddaughter tells her own dramatic story.
For transcript and more information, visit https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-10470