For antique map collectors
Catalogue every plate. Record every state. Keep it off the cloud.
ClearBench is a native desktop app for collectors of antique cartography. Cartographer, engraver, publisher, region, medium, colouring, condition: every field a serious record carries, on your computer alone.
[ Detail view of a 17th-century plate + portfolio label ]
Three things, done well.
Map collecting has its own field set: cartographer, engraver, publisher are three separate people on a 17th-century plate. ClearBench treats each as its own field.
A real catalogue
Title, cartographer, engraver, publisher, place of publication, year, source atlas, region depicted, projection, scale, dimensions, colouring, medium, condition, centerfold, restoration. Every field a bibliographer would expect on a map record.
Portfolio + exhibition labels
Six bundled templates at 50×40mm, which fits portfolio sleeves, framing-shop labels, and exhibition cards. Print exact-size PDFs on your own printer. Design once, save your house style.
Off the cloud
A serious antique map collection has provenance, valuations, and acquisition stories that don't belong on someone else's server. ClearBench keeps everything on your computer.
Built for cartography, not generic cataloguing.
The fields are the ones a serious bookseller's description card carries, drawn from how the trade actually describes a plate.
Your portfolio isn't for searching.
A serious map portfolio, particularly with high-spot first states, is the kind of asset you'd rather not advertise. Catalogue numbers, condition, and valuations stay local.
Stored on your device only
Every map, photo, condition note, and price sits on your computer. No upload, no copy on any server, no third-party access, including ours.
No analytics on your records
We don't track which cartographers you search, which dealers you buy from, or which titles you track.
Insurance schedules stay yours
The PDF valuation schedule lives on your hard drive until you choose to email it to your insurer or executor.
Backups stay yours
Full-catalogue backups are plain .clearbench JSON files you save where you want: your hard drive, an encrypted external, your own cloud. For day-to-day work, export any collection straight out to CSV, Excel, plain text, or a vCard for contacts, then round-trip back in after a bulk edit. The format is documented and stable.
No lock-in
If we vanish tomorrow, your collection is still yours, in a format you can re-import into other tools. The .clearbench backup file is plain JSON that opens in any text editor; the CSV, Excel, and plain-text exports open in tools you already have.
One price when it launches. Everything in.
No tiers, no upsells, no monthly billing. Every paying user gets every feature.
all in, no upsells
Pay in your local currency at checkout — we'll convert automatically.
- Six professional label templates, fully editable on a free-positioning canvas
- Build a catalogue around any collection: pick a starter or design your own field set
- Drag-and-drop photo gallery, plus add photos from your phone over local WiFi
- Type-aware fields with smart defaults per collection type
- Sharp, exact-size PDFs for printing
- Real macOS and Windows app with fast launch, native menus and keyboard shortcuts, dark mode that follows your OS, and no browser tab eating your RAM
- Local backups you control: export and restore the whole catalogue as one file
- All updates free for the licence year
30-day money-back guarantee · macOS and Windows · Your data stays on your device
First launch walks you through setting up your first collection in three short steps.
Common questions from map collectors.
Does it record cartographer, engraver, and publisher?
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Yes. Cartographer, engraver, and publisher are three separate fields, because on a 17th-century map they're three different people, and conflating them loses information. Place of publication is its own field too. Source atlas (the larger work the map was extracted from) gets its own field so you can group plates from the same atlas.
Colour, medium, and condition?
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Colouring is a dropdown: uncoloured, original outline, original full colour, later hand colour, modern colour. Medium is a separate dropdown: copper engraving, steel engraving, woodcut, lithograph, manuscript, photolithograph. Condition uses the rare-book scale: as-new, fine, very-good, good, fair, poor. Centerfold and restoration each have their own fields.
How does it handle dimensions and scale?
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Dimensions is a free-text field that takes the bibliographer's notation (like '38 × 56 cm') without forcing it into separate width / height numerics. Scale is its own free-text field for the cartographer's stated scale. Both are searchable.
Can I print labels for portfolio sleeves and exhibitions?
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Yes. Six bundled templates at 50×40mm, which fits portfolio sleeves, framing-shop labels, and exhibition cards. Title, cartographer, year. Print exact-size PDFs on your own printer. Design once, save it as your house style for every plate. Custom label sizes for non-standard formats are on the roadmap.
Selling, not just collecting?
ClearBench has a full dealer side: a stock list kept separate from your collection, show mode that tracks every sale from setup to pack-up, sales and ROI reports, and price-tag sheets from the same label engine. Same app, same privacy, no extra purchase.
See the dealer toolsAlso built for
ClearBench works the same way for every collection type.
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Make, format, lens, working condition
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Set number lookup, build state, box + manual condition
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