Highlights: Maritime Maverick -- The Collection of William I. Koch by Alan Granby from Antiques & Fine Art magazine

In the early 1980s collector Bill Koch took up sailing seriously and also began collecting maritime art and artifacts connected with the life of Captain James Lawrence, a distant ancestor of Koch's who had fought in the War of 1812. After winning the America's Cup in 1992, Koch broadened his collection to include works dedicated to the history of the America's Cup. When his collection was the recent subject of an exhibit at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, Koch invited Alan Granby and Janice Hyland of Hyland Granby Antiques to assist in the production of a book about his collection. Granby and Hyland were well placed to take on the project since they have helped Koch form what is recognized as one of the greatest and most diverse collection of maritime art and antiques in the world.

Granby and Hyland and their publisher have produced a spectacular book, one no sailing or antiques enthusiast will want to resist. Essays placing works in their historical and artistic context accompany superbly reproduced plates with UV varnish to enhance every detail of works by such early masters as maritime painter James E. Buttersworth (1817-1894), through shoreline observations by Fitz Henry Lane (1804-1865) and Winslow Homer (1836-1910), down to bustling regatta scenes by Raoul Dufy (1877-1953). A chapter loaded with examples of eighteenth-century ship furniture reveals it was an age when captains often had their furniture stored on a separate furniture ship during battle that, by gentleman's agreement, was never fired on.