Rick Stattler

Rick Stattler joined Swann as Director of Printed & Manuscript Americana in October of 2007, became head of Swann's book department in 2014, and was appointed as one of Swann's vice presidents in 2020. Despite the string of titles, his main responsibility is still producing Swann's regularly scheduled Americana auctions, including the annual Printed and Manuscript African Americana auction.

Swann's Americana department covers the history of the Americas from 1492 to the present, and Rick has facilitated the successful sale of numerous important collections, including Revolutionary War letters, archives relating to slavery and the Underground Railroad, early Mexican imprints, American Indian photographs, Theodore Roosevelt books, Abraham Lincoln portraiture, and numerous early editions of the Book of Mormon. Manuscript and archival collections are a specialty.

Rick previously spent 15 years in the library world, first as manuscript curator and library director at the Rhode Island Historical Society, and then as an archivist at Harvard’s Houghton Library. During his years in the archives, he cataloged large collections of Civil War letters, women's diaries, slave trade papers, Quaker records, and more. He is a graduate of Brown University (B.A., 1990) and Rhode Island College (M.A. in History, 1999).

Rick has served on the boards of the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, Rhode Island Labor History Society, New England Archivists, and Young Autism Program Charitable Foundation, and has lectured widely upon the random areas of his expertise (and beyond). For many years he played baseball by 19th century rules, and still occasionally takes the field with the Atlantic Base Ball Club of Brooklyn.

Rick on our blog:
Chiles Rellenos, circa 1825

Updated July 12, 2018