PTOLEMAEUS, Claudius; translated by ANGELUS, Jacobus, and edited by Nicolaus GERMANUS
Cosmographia.
Publication
Ulm, Lienhart Holle, 16 July 1482.
Description
Folio (428 by 310mm), 102 leaves, doublecolumn, 44 lines and headline, Gothic letter, 32 double-page woodcut maps with fine original hand-colour, 4 woodcut diagrams in the text, 2 large illuminated historiated initials, one showing Donnus Nicolaus presenting his book to Pope Paul II, the other of Ptolemy, 159 other woodcut initials coloured in red, green and ochre, paragraph marks and initial-strokes supplied in ochre, tear to d6, and repaired tear to the map ‘Tertia Africa’, some dampstaining and discolouration throughout, including spotting affecting the final three maps, skilful reinforcement to weakened lower page corners on maps, single leaf free endpaper bearing ownership inscription; re- cased in contemporary doeskin over clasped oak boards, joints reinforced with vellum waste, remnants of one clasp remaining.
[Bound after]: ‘Registrum’ from Johannes Reger’s 1486 edition of Ptolemy’s “Cosmographia”, decorated with 17 5- and 6-line manuscript initials in red and blue, 30 leaves bound in 6s (not 8s as is usually the case); 9 leaves in the ‘registrum’ uncut, tear to d6.
Watermark: Late fifteenth century Italian watermark of a flower with 7 petals throughout, with the exception of the front endpaper/’initial blank’, which bears the watermark of an upper case letter ‘B’ on a crowned shield. These were used by the le Bé family of Troyes, in this case ‘Ioane le Bé’. Three members of the Troyenne papermaking le Bé family bore the Christian name ‘Jean’: Jean I started his business in 1406. Jean II owned two paper mills around the 1470s, and Jean III lived in Troye in the first half of the 16th century. The le Bé family were accredited papermaker for the Université de Paris from 1520 onwards.
References Campbell, 179-210; Schreiber, 5032; Skelton, bibliographical note prefixed to the facsimile of the 1482 Ulm Ptolemy; Troley, T.2:636.
2,300,000 AUD
The first atlas to reflect post-antique discoveries about the size and shape of the earth, and the first map signed by its author
A fine example in a contemporary binding, here bound with Johannes Reger’s ‘Registrum’ made for his 1486 edition of the work.
The text of Claudius Ptolemy’s (c100-170CE) ‘Cosmographia’ was translated into Latin from the original Greek by Jacobus Angelus (c1360-1411) and was first published, in Renaissance times, at Vicenza (1475), Bologna (1477) and Rome (1478). The sumptuous edition published at Ulm in 1482, however, far surpassed all earlier efforts and remains one of the most important publications in the history of cartography. This is the first redaction of the “Geography” to be printed outside Italy, the earliest atlas printed in Germany, the first to depart from the classical prototype to reflect post-antique discoveries, the first to be illustrated with woodcuts rather than engravings, and the first to contain hand-coloured maps, the design and execution of which were ascribed to a named cartographer, and the first to incorporate the five modern maps by Nicolaus Germanus (c1420-1490). Though printed outside Italy, the paper this magnificent atlas was printed on was imported from Italy, and payment made in part by complete copies of the finished atlas.
The maps
The 1482 edition is the first printed edition to contain the full complement of 32 maps, and its world map, extended to the northwest, is the first printed cartographical representation of Greenland, Iceland and the North Atlantic.
“The artist responsible for the woodcut maps identifies himself at the top of the world map as Johannes of Arnsheim, making it the earliest datable printed map to bear a signature” (Campbell p. 137). He has incorporated as his sign a backwards N into the woodcut text on each map.
The Ulm edition, moreover, was the first to depart from the classical prototype by expanding the atlas to reflect post-antique discoveries about the size and shape of the earth. To the canonical twenty-seven Ptolemaic maps were added five “modern” maps of Spain, France, Italy, the Holy Land and northern Europe. The world map is the first to be based on Ptolemy’s second projection, in which both parallels and meridians are shown curved to convey the sphericity of the earth. Armszheim, furthermore, updated the Ptolemaic world picture by incorporating improvements that were probably based on a manuscript of the 1470s by Nicolaus Germanus (ca 1420-1490), a Benedictine monk of Reichenbach Abbey in Bavaria, who is depicted in the first illuminated letter of the atlas presenting his book to the dedicatee Pope Paul II. One notable addition is a rudimentary depiction of Scandinavia to the north, within an extension of the map’s top border. This is also the earliest printed map to show the northernmost reaches of the Atlantic Ocean. The world map, moreover, embodies what is perhaps the most readily apparent feature of the Ulm Ptolemy: its beauty.
The text
“The text is the early Latin translation by Jacopo d’Angelo [ Jacobus Angelus], and its maps are the reworking of the Ptolemaic corpus by the cartographer Donnus (Dominus) Nicolaus Germanus. Three recensions of Nicolaus’s reworkings have been distinguished: the first, drawn on a trapezoid projection reputedly devised by Nicolaus himself and, therefore, also known as the Donis (Donis = Dominus) projection; the second on a homeotheric projection and with three additional modern maps; and the third on the same projection with further revisions and two additional modern maps. The Ulm Ptolemy derives from the third recension, and thus represents Nicolaus’s most mature work” (Campbell, ‘Earliest Printed Maps’, p. 124).
Printing history
“That the stock of the 1482 edition was not exhausted by 1486 is indicated by the existence of a number of copies (some in early binding) containing the additional texts printed by Johannes Reger in the latter year for his own edition...” (Skelton) - The present work is just such a book.
“For Leinhart Holle, the handsome edition of the Cosmographia which he printed at Ulm in 1482 was an unprofitable investment. Only one more book came from his press; and by 1484 he was out of business and gone from Ulm, and his stock of type, blocks, and printed sheets passed into the hands of Johann Reger, Ulm factor or agent (pro-visor) to Giusto de Albano, of Venice... Reger lost little time in bringing the Cosmographia back on the market. He compiled a gazeteer or geographical index to the text under the title ‘Registrum alphabeticum super octo libros Ptolemei’, to which he prefixed a ‘Nota ad inueniendum igitur regiones, explaining its purpose and use; and he also obtained, or composed, an anonymous tract entitled ‘De locis ac mirabilibus mundi’... they were printed by Reger in 1486 and inserted into some unsold copies of the 1482 edition... In the map Europa IV in the 1482 edition, Reger found the Ptolemaic name Chetaori, corresponding to his birthplace Kemnat in Bavaria; he introduced this into Ptolemy’s list of towns in bk. II ch. 10 [not present in this 1482 edition of the main text], and inserted in his ‘Registrum’ the entry: ‘Chemmat siue chetaori li 2 c 10 ta 4 e Hic iohannes reger duxit origine et ano etatis 32 compposuit hoc register in vlma anno domini 1486’. This is the evidence for Reger’s authorship of the ‘Registrum’, which is otherwise unsigned” (Skelton).
Claudius Ptolemaeus Ptolemy (c100-170), was a Greco-Roman scholar, most famous for the three works he produced on astronomy, geography and astrology. Almost nothing is known of Ptolemy’s life save that he lived in Alexandria, and that he was a Roman citizen, indicated by his Roman nomen of Claudius.
He wrote his most famous work, the ‘Geographia’ around 150 AD, using an atlas by Marinus of Tyre as the foundation, and adding information from Roman, Persian and Babylonian sources. Alexandria was an intellectual centre of the ancient world, and it was also a vital point on trade routes between the Far East and Europe, giving Ptolemy access to the knowledge of travellers from all over the empire. The ‘Geographia’ was intended as a supplement to the ‘Almagest’, showing how to put the astronomical principles outlined in the first work into practice, and providing tables of co-ordinates of important places throughout the world. What began as a simple list became a synthesis of classical geographical knowledge from the millennium; Ptolemy collated and compared every text he could lay hands on. The ‘Geographia’ eventually ran to eight books. The first was concerned with the practice of geography and cartography; the middle six were filled with tables of co-ordinates for over 8,000 locations; and the final book suggested a method of dividing the oikuomene (the Greek term for the known world) into twenty-six regional maps: ten of Europe, four of Africa, and twelve of Asia, preceded by one of the world, for which he offers three projections. This format would be retained in atlases for centuries. Although the ‘Geographia’ gives instructions for the construction of maps, it is unclear whether the original manuscript versions of the text contained any; at any rate, later copyists reconstructed maps from the co-ordinates given in the text, rather than existing examples. The first modern printed edition with maps was not published until 1477 in Bologna.
Provenance:
1. Inscribed on front free endpaper “Donnait Le Sr. munery mon beaufrere [given by my brother-in-law Sr. Munery] anno 1672 Morel Senator”.
2. Inscribed on d2 “Josephus Mattheus de Morel 1718, Franciseii de Morel”. This is probably André de Morel (Maurel) (1603-1690), Senator in the Parlement de Provence. Morel’s family began their social elevation under Charles d’Anjou (1446-1481) who was also King of Naples and Earl of Provence. It is said that the King put Pierre de Morel in his will and, at his death in 1481, he inherited a part of his library. The family served the French Crown as advisors and officers during wars in Northern Italy and Spain until Henri IV of France. Then in the late 1620’s André de Maurel became a prominent magistrate and member of Parliament of Provence. He ruled his office for 67 years and was known as Senator Morel. His second son, Joseph de Maurel (1658-1717) was Bishop of Saint Paul-Trois-Chatêaux between Aix and Valence. His heir and nephew, François de Maurel, Captain in the ‘Regiment de Toulouse’ in 1719, inherited his belongings after his death.
The earliest printed map to name the Antipodes
LA SALE, Antoine de
La Salade, nouvelleme[n]t imprimee laquelle fait mension de tous les pays du monde Et du pays de la belle Sybille avec la figure pour aller au mont de la belle Sibille Et aussi la figure de la Mer & de la terre et plusieurs belles remonstrances.
Publication [Paris, veuve de Michel Le Noir, 1521].
Description
Quarto (254 by 180mm), (4 ff.), lxiii ff. lxxiii, numerous illustrations within text, three folding plates, several leaves (mainly the last nine) with loss to upper corner, skilfully repaired in facsimile, some stains and wormholes on the last leaves, contemporary full panelled calf, blind fillet borders, with gilt foliate device to corner and centre, spine in six compartments separated by raised bands. Collation: [sig. ?4 a-d6 e-f4 g6 h-i4 k6 l-n4]
References Bechtel, L.54-L55; Brunet, III, 854; Shirley [World], 50; Tchйmerzine, IV, pp. 59-61.
145,000 AUD
An eclectic miscellany of moral, didactic, and chivalric treatises, ‘La Salade’ also contains the earliest printed map to name the Antipodes.
Prepared by Antoine de La Sale for his pupil, Jean II of Anjou, Duke of Lorraine, the title, ‘La Salade’, is not only a pun on de La Sale’s name, but also reflects the varied composition of the work - as de La Sale notes in the introduction, “in the salad are several good herbs” (trans.). The contents cover a variety of subjects edifying for a fledgling duke: a treatise on the eight virtues useful to a prince, stories and stratagems from ancient authors like Valerius Maximus and Frontinus, accounts of de La Sale’s own adventures in Sicily, geography, and the ceremonies and ordinances of Philip IV of France. ‘La Salade’ is also one of the earliest European texts to provide information about Iceland and Greenland, previously “unknown to our astrologers due to their long harsh winters” (trans.).
The text is illustrated throughout and includes folding plates that depict “Le Mont de la Sibille” and the genealogical tree of the House of Aragon – as well as a map of the world.
The map
The world map is a “curious ensemble” (Shirley), combining ideas from the classical world (in particular, those of Pomponius Mela) with medieval and more contemporary concepts. It is also the earliest printed map to name the Antipodes. England and Scotland are shown separated by a strait, as is the case also in early portolan charts, while Africa appears as a peninsula. Present in the south is the “Regio Patalis”, a name drawn from Pliny, which hints at the presence of Australia.
Antoine de La Sale (c1386-c1461)
Born the illegitimate son of Bernard de La Sale, French mercenary captain turned Tard-Venus bandit, de La Sale entered the court of the dukes of Anjou in 1402. In the 50 years that he spent in their service, he moved through the ranks, from page to squire, to soldier, to administrator, eventually taking up a position as “gouverneur”, that is tutor and mentor, to Jean II of Anjou, Duke of Lorraine, for whom he wrote ‘La Salade’. In 1448, he became “gouverneur” to the sons of Louis de Luxembourg, Count of St Pol, for whom he wrote a book similar to ‘La Salade’, known as ‘La Sale’. Among his other works are a treatise on the organization of tournaments, a “consolatio” to Catherine de Neufville, on the death of her son, and ‘Le Petit Jehan de Saintré’, a light and witty chivalric romance.
Rare: we are only aware of one example of the first edition appearing at auction in the last 40 years.
PTOLEMAEUS, Claudius; and Michael VILLANOVANUS, known as ‘SERVETUS’
Geographicae Enarrationis, Libri Octo. Ex Bilibaldi Pircheymheri tralatione, sed ad Graeca & Prisca exemplaria a Michaele Villanovan (d.i. Servertus) secondo recogniti, & locis innumeris denuo castigati.
Publication
Prostant Lugduni, apud Hugonem a Porta, 1541.
Description
Folio (405 by 285mm), large woodcut printer’s device on title-page; doublepage woodcut old map of the world, 26 old regional maps, 2 modern maps of the world, 20 new regional maps and one fullpage, most with text enclosed in elaborate woodcut borders, probably by Hans Holbein and Urs Graf, text with 2 full-page woodcuts of a diagram and armillary sphere showing the projection of the winds by Albrecht Dürer (l4 verso), all with magnificent contemporary hand-colour in full, 4 large woodcut diagrams, woodcut initials, colophon n4 present; seventeenth-century limp vellum, re-cased.
A rare and beautiful framework for the schematized world: with exceptional original hand-colour throughout
Beautifully coloured in a contemporary hand throughout, and very rare as such, this is the second edition of Ptolemy’s ‘Geographia’ to be edited by Michael Villanovanus, better known as Servetus, (c1490-1570). It was printed by Gaspar Trechsel for Hugues de la Porte (1500-1572) in Lyon, a well-known protestant publisher and bookseller, and a prominent member of the Grande Compagnie des Libraries de Lyon (founded in 1519), many of whose works were on the list of condemned books, some of which were destroyed on the banks of the Saone by order of the Archbishop in 1568 (Davis).
Nevertheless, the most inflammatory remarks from the earlier editions of the text have been removed. While working as an editor for the publishers Melchior (c1490-1570) and Gaspar Trechsel, Servetus, who was born at Villanueva, in Aragon, Spain, wrote the preface and many of the descriptions for the versos of these maps, for an edition which was first published in 1535. He unwittingly translated verbatim the text accompanying map 41, ‘Tab. Ter. Sanctae’, of the Holy Land, from the 1522 and 1525 editions, in which it states that Palestine “was not such a fertile land as was generally believed, since modern travellers reported it barren”. Excising the offensive text for this new edition did not save Servetus, when he was burnt at the stake in 1553, this heresy was charged to him, along with 39 other counts, which included the sins of writing against the Holy Trinity and infant baptism. As a result, many copies of the book were burned with him on the orders of John Calvin.
The maps, which are very rarely found with such fine contemporary colour, as here, include 27 depicting the ancient world, 22 of the modern world, and one of Lotharingia. They are printed from the same woodblocks that were created by Laurent Fries for the 1522 edition of Ptolemy’s ‘Geographia’, after the original 1513 maps of Martin Waldseemuller (1470-1520). Fries was originally a physician, “at a succession of places in the Alsace region, with a short spell in Switzerland, before settling in Strasbourg, in about 1519. By this time, he had established a reputation as a writer on medical topics, with several publications already to his credit. Indeed, it was thus that Fries met the Strasbourg printer and publisher Johann Grüninger, an associate of the St. Die group of scholars formed by, among others, Walter Lud, Martin Ringmann and Martin Waldseemuller. It would seem that Gruninger was responsible for printing several of the maps prepared by Waldseemuller, and for supervising the cutting of the maps for the 1513 edition of Ptolemy, edited by the group.
Three of the maps relate to the Americas: ‘Terra Nova’, the first map in an atlas dedicated to America; ‘Tabula noua totius orbis’, to which he added images of Russian, Egyptian, Etheopian, Trapobanan and Mursulian kings, and an elephant off the coast of Greenland; and ‘Orbis typus universalis’, the ‘Admiral’s map’, and the first map in an atlas to name America’.
Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) created his image of the armillary sphere for the Gruninger edition of Ptolemy’s Geography, 1525. His simple and elegant rendition of the inhabited parts of the globe, within the floating spherical astrolabe, is less a scientific instrument and more a framework for the schematized world; belying the complex nature of Ptolemy’s text.
HAKLUYT, Richard, and WRIGHT, Edward
The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, Made by Sea or Over-land...
Publication
London, George Bishop, Ralph Newberies and Robert Barker, 1599–1600.
Description
3 works bound in 2 volumes, folio (286 by 181 mm), complete with the rare WrightMolyneux world map on two sheets joined, map carefully trimmed to the neatline, with repaired closed tear and light restoration around folds, eighteenth-century bookplate of John Seale of Mount Boon, Devon, to front pastedown of second volume, vol. I sig. I6 with chip to fore edge just grazing shoulder note, a few leaves in same volume with very minor peripheral damp staining; vol. III sig. I5 with text misaligned with consequent slight shaving of shoulder note, contents generally very clean and fresh, mid-eighteenth century calf, recent red morocco labels to style, neat restoration at extremities, covers panelled in blind, light red speckled edges.
Dimensions
Map dimensions: 630 by 430mm. (24.75 by 17 inches).
References
Borba De Moraes, pp. 391–92; Church 322; ESTC S106753; Grolier English 100, 14; Hill 743; JCB (3) I:360–61; LOC European Americana 598/42; Penrose, Boies, ‘Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance 1420–1620’, p. 318; Pforzheimer 443; Printing and the Mind of Man 105; Quinn, p. 490; Sabin 29595-97-98; STC 12626; cf. Shirley 221.
1,522,000 AUD
“the great prose epic of the Elizabethan period” with both the Wright-Molyneux world map and the rare suppressed ‘Voyage to Cadiz’
The Wright-Molyneux Map is the first English map on Mercator’s projection, it is the first map to name Lake Ontario, and one of the first maps to use the name “Virginia”. Richard Hakluyt’s ‘Principall Navigations’ is first collection of English voyages, published at the height of Elizabethan maritime prestige and “the great prose epic of the Elizabethan period”.
The Wright-Molyneux Map
Gerard Mercator (1512-1594) revolutionized cartography with his development of an isogonic cylindrical projection that mapped a sphere on to a flat plane. Mercator expected that his projection would be a valuable tool for navigators but he neglected to provide practical guidelines on how use it. Edward Wright (1558?-1615), a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, modified Mercator’s system and published his results, ‘The Correction of Certain Errors in Navigation’, in 1599 and again in an improved edition entitled ‘Certaine errors in navigation, detected and corrected’ (London, 1610). Wright’s book contained new mathematical tables and instructions on plotting straight-line courses on maps based on the Mercator projection. The system developed by Wright contributed to the supremacy of the British Navy and is still in use today.
Wright published ‘A Chart of the World on Mercator’s Projection’ in 1599 based on his projection of a globe engraved by the English globe maker Emeric Molyneux in 1592. It was the first map to use Wright’s improvements on Mercator’s projection. It quickly became famous, even catching Shakespeare’s attention: in “Twelfth Night”, first performed in 1602, Maria says of Malvolio: “He does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies” (Act III, Scene II).
Unlike many maps and charts of the era that represented the often fantastic speculations of their makers, Wright’s ‘Chart of the World’ offers a minimum of detail and even leaves areas blank wherever geographic information was lacking. These undefined areas are especially evident along Wright’s coastlines. For example, the coast of California above Cape Mendocino is blank.
Wright’s world map depicts a wider Pacific Ocean than other maps of its time. On the American continent, Wright labels upper California ‘Nova Albion’; other maps designated this area ‘Anian’ but Wright adopted the name given the region by Sir Francis Drake. ‘Quivira’ still appears on the West coast. Further to the east, the map also shows a ‘Lake of Tadouac’ reminiscent of the Sea of Verrazano. This lake is connected to the Atlantic Ocean by a river that appears to run south of the St. Lawrence River. It is also connected to a large body of water to the north. Lake Tadouac is apparently an early reference to either the Hudson Bay or to the Great Lakes, neither of which were “discovered” by Europeans until eleven or twelve years after Wright’s map was published. Wright’s map is also one of the earliest maps to use the name “Virginia”.
The present example is in the second state, also from 1599, with the cartouche with engraved text describing Drake’s discoveries in the Americas added to the lower left of the map.
Top left are the arms of Elizabeth I; top right a strapwork cartouche with a text about Francis Gaulle’s discoveries in the Pacific; and bottom centre another cartouche with a general description of the chart.
The Principall Navigations
Comprising 243 narratives of voyages and travels in the New World in some 1,700,000 words, ‘The Principall Navigations’ is the greatest assemblage of travel accounts and navigations to all parts of the world collected up to its time, and a vital source for early New World exploration. “It is difficult to over rate the importance and value of this extraordinary collection of voyages” (Sabin).
This second edition of Hakluyt’s voyages is, in fact, an entirely different book from the initial 1589 compilation and was greatly expanded from the single-volume original. Boies Penrose considered that “the first edition of the Principal Navigations transcended anything that had gone before, though it, in turn, was surpassed by the second edition”. Indeed, Hakluyt devoted his life to the work and “throughout the 1590s, therefore, this indefatigable editor set himself to the formidable task of expanding the collection and bringing it up to date … this was indeed Hakluyt’s monumental masterpiece, and the great prose epic of the Elizabethan period … Much that was new and important was included: the travels of Newbery and Fitch, Lancaster’s first voyage, the new achievements in the Spanish Main, and particularly Raleigh’s tropical adventures …The book must always remain a great work of history, and a great sourcebook of geography, while the accounts themselves constitute a body of narrative literature which is of the highest value in understanding the spirit and the tendencies of the Tudor age” (Penrose).
Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations was one of the major prestige publications of the Tudor state, seeking to do for English exploration what Holinshed’s Chronicles had done for the nation’s history, a key work in promoting overseas ventures. Hakluyt himself never travelled further afield than France, but he met or corresponded with many of the great explorers, navigators, and cartographers including Drake, Raleigh, Gilbert, Frobisher, Ortelius, and Mercator. In addition to long and significant descriptions of the Americas in volume 3, the work also contains accounts of Russia, Scandinavia, the Mediterranean, Turkey, Middle East, Persia, India, south-east Asia, and Africa. Hakluyt owed a good deal to Sir Francis Walsingham’s support and probably gathered intelligence for him in Paris; the first edition was both dedicated to and licensed for publication by him. After Walsingham’s death in 1590, the patronage of Sir Robert Cecil was increasingly important to Hakluyt. Volume I of the second
edition of the Principal Navigations was dedicated to the lord admiral, Lord Howard of Effingham, but the other two were dedicated to Cecil.
Here the first volume contains the original printing of the rare ‘Voyage to Cadiz’, which was suppressed by order of Queen Elizabeth after Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, incurred her wrath by returning to England from Ireland without leave in 1599 to marry Sir Philip Sidney’s widow, the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham. This copy is the second issue of the second edition with volume I dated 1599. The first issue is dated 1598, and its title page makes reference to the Earl of Essex’s voyage to Cadiz, which was ordered to be suppressed because Elizabeth was angered by Essex’s status as a popular hero of the war against Spain. However, the printed leaves detailing the voyage to Cadiz, pp. 607-619, which ought also to have been suppressed, are here present in their original uncancelled state.
The third volume is devoted almost entirely to the Americas, the South Seas, and various circumnavigations of the world. It includes the accounts of Niza, Coronado, Ruiz, and Espejo relating to New Mexico; Ulloa, Drake, and others concerning California; and Raleigh’s account of Guiana. “Hakluyt was a vigorous propagandist and empire-builder; his purpose was to further British expansion overseas. He saw Britain’s greatest opportunity in the colonization of America, which he advocated chiefly for economic reasons, but also to spread Protestantism, and to oust Spain” (Hill).
Edward Wright’s world map was, according to Quinn’s 1974 census for ‘The Hakluyt Handbook’, only to be found in 19, of the 240, predominantly institutional, examples of the book surveyed. Quinn notes that this survival rate is, even allowing for the high mortality levels traditionally attached to decorative world maps in books, “sufficiently low to raise the possibility that not all copies were equipped with the map, either because it was made available after many sets had been sold, which would mean that its date might be later than 1599, or because it was an optional extra supplied at additional cost”. Quinn’s survey included all major booksellers’ catalogues and public auctions in the English speaking world.
Subsequent to this 1974 census, the only other copy we know to have appeared in commerce with the map in the past half-century is the Grenville–Crawford–Rosebery copy, bound in early nineteenth-century red morocco, which lacked the map until a supplied copy was inserted sometime between its sale at auction by Sotheby’s in 1933 and its reappearance in the Franklin Brooke-Hitching sale, Sotheby’s, 30 Sept. 2014, lot 579. Hakluyt’s use of this map in his publication was to show “so much of the world as hath beene hetherto discovered, and is comme to our knowledge”.
The historical importance of the work cannot be overstated. It is truly “an invaluable treasure of nautical information which has affixed to Hakluyt’s name a brilliancy of reputation which time can never efface or obscure” (Church). ‘The Principall Navigations’ “redounds as much to the glory of the English nation as any book that ever was published” (Bancroft).
Rarity
Known examples of the Wright-Molyneux map British Library, London (3 copies); Bodleian Library, Oxford; Chatsworth House, Derbyshire; Eton College Library, Windsor; Huntington, San Marino (2 copies); Newberry Library, Chicago; Lilly Library Bloomington; Clements Library, Ann Arbor; Princeton (2 copies); New York Public Library, New York; Philadelphia Public Library, Philadelphia; Naval War College, Newport; JCB Library, Providence; University of Virginia, Charlottesville; Mitchell Library, Sydney.
Provenance
Sir John Henry Seale, 1st Baronet (1780–1844) of Mount Boone in the parish of Townstal near Dartmouth in Devon, was a Whig Member of Parliament for Dartmouth in 1838. He was created a baronet on 31 July 1838. He owned substantial lands in Devon, mainly at Townstal and Mount Boone. Together with the Earl of Morley of Saltram House near Plymouth, he built several bridges in Dartmouth, most notably the Dart crossing.
DUDLEY, Robert; and others
Direttorio Marittimo di Don Roberto Dudleo Duca di Northumbria fatto p[er] ordine del Ser[issimo]Gr: Duca di Toscana suo Sig[no]re e diviso in due Tomi et ogni Tomo in due libri co[n] suoi Capitoli.
Publication [Firenze, c1637-1647].
Description
Folio (290 by 196mm). Original working autograph and holograph manuscript, in Italian, illustrated throughout with diagrams, and drawings of instruments, on seventeenth-century Italian paper, with various watermarks including a Sun (similar to Heawood 3893) and a Medici Coat-ofArms (similar to Heawood 786), extensively revised at the time, some pages edited with paste-overs, others excised; early drab Italian stiff paper wrappers, stabbed and sewn as issued.
Collation: 282 pages, foliated in pencil; pages [i-iv] bio-bibliography by Domenico Maria Manni; 1: title-page; 2: additional draft title-page, and dedication; p3-14: prospectus of contents (cancelled), followed by autobiographical ‘Proemio’; p15-139: ‘Direttorio Marittimo’, revised texts of 28 chapters of ‘Dell’arcano del mare’, incorporating theological ‘Proemio’, pp39-40; p140-146 addenda.
Condition: a few leaves missing between folios 86 and 87 (chapter xix and the beginning of xx), some lower margins trimmed, occasionally crossing the text
References
R. Dudley, Dell’Arcano del mare, 6 books in 3 volumes, Florence, 1646-1647; Dell’arcano del mare, second edition, Florence, 1661; Arthur Gould Lee, The Son of Leicester, the Story of Sir Robert Dudley, London, 1964; J. T. Leader, Life of Sir Robert Dudley, Florence, Barbera, 1895; J. F. Schutte, S. J., ‘Japanese Cartography at the court of Florence; Robert Dudley’s maps of Japan, 1606-1636’, in Imago Mundi (23), 1969, pages 29-58; Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, Notizie degli aggrandimenti delle scienze fisiche accaduti in Toscana nel corso di anni LX. del secolo XVII, 3 volumes. Florence, 1780; Manoscritti e alcuni libri a stampa singolari esposti e annotati da Pietro Bigazzi. Firenze, Tipografia Barbera, 1869.
951,500 AUD
Dudley’s original manuscript manual for the use and instruction of the officers of the Tuscan fleet
The only known manuscript example of any part of Robert Dudley’s magnum opus, ‘Dell’arcano del mare’ held in private hands. An astonishing survival: a working manuscript, seemingly specifically assembled for the eyes and instruction of the officers of the Tuscan Navy, the Knights of St. Stefano, rather than for a public audience. This suggestion is borne out by the wording of the first title for the work that Dudley has crossed out (page 2): ‘Compendio del Direttorio Marittimo: Il pr[im]o Tomo e intilato, Supplemento della Navigare. Nel pr[im]o libro si discorre dell ‘arte, piu Curiosa di Navigare...’.
This was also the theory of Sir John Temple Leader, previous owner, and Dudley scholar: “It seems probable that the Arcano del Mare was only a resume of several previous works by Dudley. One of them is the MS. volume, quarto size, of which I possess the original, mostly in Dudley’s own hand. It is called the ‘Direttorio Marittimo’, and was written in very faulty Italian for the use and instruction of the officers of the Tuscan fleet. In it most of the subjects enlarged upon in the Arcano, are treated concisely, including great circle sailing and all kinds of navigation ; the administrative management of a fleet, and its manoeuvres in a naval battle, etc. The book is in ancient covers of thick paper, and preceded by a dedication to the Grand-Duke, and by a sketch of Dudley’s own naval life, written in his own hand with all his corrections and underlinings” (Leader, page 19).
Leader acquired the ‘Direttorio’ from Florentine librarian, collector, and bookseller, Pietro Bigazzi, from who he also acquired Gian Carlo de’ Medici’s (1611-1663), first edition of ‘Dell’Arcano del mare’, and a second edition, too. Leader writes about all three works, and the story of their acquisition, in his ‘Life of Sir Robert Dudley’ (1895).
The texts of the ‘Direttorio’ have clearly been written by Dudley, over time, but from at least as early as 1643-1644, and are further annotated by him up until 1647 (he died in 1649), and then further annotated by others, up until the publication of the second edition of 1661. They include: Dudley’s autobiography, in which he sets out his credentials as an expert in all things maritime - exploration, navigation, naval warfare, and architecture; several drafts and a completed version of a theological preface, or ‘Proemio’, which was eventually published in the second edition of the ‘Dell’arcarno del mar’ (1661); 28 chapters of material related to the text of the first edition of the ‘Dell’arcano del mare’ (1646-1647); theoretical navigational material not published in either edition of the ‘Dell’arcano del mare’.
Contents
Pages [i-iv]: later bio-bibliography
Written by Domenico Maria Manni (1690-1788) director of the Bibilioteca Strozzi, polymath, editor and publisher, also a member of Academia dell Crusca. He owned the ‘Direttorio’, according to Giovanni
Targioni -Tozzetti (1712-1783), see ‘Notizie degli aggrandimenti delle scienze fisciche: accaduti in Toscana nel corso dianni LX del scolo XVII Florence’, 1780, volume I., page 80. These notes include mention of the manuscript design by Dudley of the Mole at Livorno in the time of Cosimo II (1590-1620) which was then in the Magliabechiana library. Manni also notes two imperial folio volumes, in the Palatina di Pitti library, of “Marine Treatises”, i.e. Dudley’s manuscript Treatise on marine architecture, began before 1610, in English and continued in Italian, by Dudley, until about 1635 (see Maria Enrica Vadala, ‘Il Trattato dell’architettura maritima di Roberto Dudley, storia e dispersione di un manoscritto’, Studi secenteschi, vol. 61 (2020), pages 193-237).
Manni writes: “Leaving aside many superfine circumstances which have given the Author the opportunity of attending to the theory and practice of the art of navigation, it will suffice to say that as a young man he had a natural sympathy for the sea, so that although he had a very pleasant charge on land in 1588 under his father, then Generalissimo, he nevertheless wanted to exercise the maritime militia, on which the greatness and reputation of the Kingdom of England then depended. Desirous still of discovering new countries (which pert made to manufacture and arm vessels of war), Author confided much in the great knowledge and experience of the famous seafarer and learned mathematician Abram Kendal of England, his master. Hence it followed that in 1594 he began his voyage to West India to discover and open the passage of the Guyana or Walliana Empire in America, and at that time he was much nominated as a great and rich nation; as he did with good success being General by sea and land with his vessels and people etc.”
Pages 1-2: Title-pages and Dedication
Dudley opens his ‘Dorettorio’ with a heart-felt dedication, officially to Grand Duke Ferdinand II, as was proper, and as he did ‘Dell’arcano del mare’. However, in this instance, he goes to great pains to go above and beyond that dedication to extend his tribute to the “Generalissimo del Mare”, i.e. Gian Carlo de’ Medici (1611-1663), Cardinal from 1644, “High Admiral of the Tuscan Navy”, “General of the Mediterranean Sea”, and “General of the Spanish Seas”. Gian Carlo was the second son of Cosimo II de’Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Maria Maddelena of Austria, and the recipient of a superb example of ‘Dell’arcano del mare’, with which the current manuscript was previously housed.
Humbly, Dudley hopes that “in [the ‘Direttorio] one can find something not useless for the common good of Navigation for your Highness and for Prince Giovanni Carlo Medici”. And thanks the Medici family for their support during the “past 37 years that he has been in voluntary exile …and under their protection”, dating the dedication to 1643-44.
Dudley then notes that he took the trouble to finish the ‘Direttorio’ in the best way that his experience in 50 years of maritime affairs (i.e. since 1594) has been able to produce and plan, but if he has erred in anything he hopes he will be excused.
Pages 3-14: ‘Supplem[en]to della Navigaz[io]ne perfetta Tomo primo libro I : proemio’
Dudley writes of his many maritime achievements in exploration, warfare, and naval architecture, clearly intending to give authority to the following texts: “Setting aside many superfluous circumstances which have occasioned the author to turn his attention to the theory and practice of the art of navigation, suffice it to say that he is Nephew of three Grand Admirals of England (or Generalissimi of the Sea, which is one of the highest offices held under that of the Crown) and that he had from his youth a natural sympathy for the sea, and this in spite of his having in 1588 held the very honorable post of Colonel in the land forces, which he exercised under the command of his father, the General in Chief and Grand Master of England…”
As Tyacke reports: this ‘proemio’ or autobiographical preface is not printed in the first edition of the ‘Dell’Arcano del mare’; nor is it the “theological proemio” which is printed in the second edition of 1661; but rather an account of Dudley’s career before he arrived in Florence. It is clearly designed to establish his credentials and to add great authority to the ‘Direttorio’. The text describes how Dudley had learnt the art of navigation and maritime discipline at about the age of 17, had experience of battle under his father the Earl of Leicester, and of navigation, and of designing warships and of participating in sea battles. There is a version of the text he wrote for Richard Hakluyt’s ‘Voyages…’ (1600) (volume III page 574) about his voyage to Trinidad and to the Orinoco, and Guiana in 1594 (see George F. Warner, ‘The voyage of Sir Robert Dudley …to the West Indies’, (1594-1595), Hakluyt Society, 1899).
In this autobiographical preface Dudley writes: “Si contento, non di meno, che consumasse il capricio e la spesa dall India Occidentale, p[er] scoprire et aprire il passo dell Imperio di Guiana o Walliana in America molto nominato in quel tempo pazione grande e vicca si come fece essendo Generale per mare...si fece padrone dell Isola della Trinita scopri la Guiana” – “He was happy, nevertheless… to discover the West Indies and open the way to the Empire of Guiana or Walliana in America, much known at that time as a great and wealthy country, and to be the General for the sea voyage … he made himself master of Trinita Island [Trinidad]; He discovered Guiana”. Dudley always claimed that he got to the river Orinoco in Guiana, in 1594 before Sir Walter Ralegh.
Dudley then writes about the famous learned mariner and mathematician Abraham Kendal who was his ship’s master on his voyage to Trinidad,
and then records how he had sent Captain Wood on a voyage to China (which in the event was unsuccessful). He records his own participation in the raid on Cadiz to destroy the Spanish fleet being assembled in 1596; he says in this and other voyages he practised navigation and the maritime and military disciplines, using great circle sailing and longitude: ‘di gra circoli e della longitude’, adding the words “come Arcano” – “as in the Arcano”, presumably a bit later.
He says that mariners have not well understood, nor practiced, navigation, according to great circles, and the other “spiral and horizontal methods”, with practical longitude.
It is his intention to explain how to do this, and a later insertion, by Dudley, in the margin, says that the first book teaches the method of using the hydrographical and general charts of the Author.
Pages 15-139: ‘Direttorio Marittimo’, revised texts of 28 chapters of ‘Dell’arcano del mare’, incorporating theological ‘Proemio’ (pages 39-40)
This is a theological preface to the ‘Direttorio’, and Dudley assures the censors that these potentially troublesome mathematical matters were in fact created by God himself along with natural and supernatural elements. Dudley formulates his argument for scientific knowledge, of which there are three types: the natural, supernatural, and the efficacy of the scientific (i.e. geometry and mathematics, see page 39) “le cose mathematiche sono certe, sicure et infallibili p[er] dimonstrazione e pero sono pui excellenti delle cose naturali...ma sono inferiori, delle cose supernaturali et immutabili”. An earlier version, on page 15, has crossed out “intelletto humana non arriua” – “Mathematical things are as certain and infallible by demonstration and therefore they are superior to the natural senses …but they are inferior to the supernatural things to which the human intellect cannot reach”.
There are no fewer than four early versions of the theological ‘Proemo’ in the ‘Direttorio’, two of which are incomplete revisions of difficult passages. However, the “theological proemio” which appears on pages 39-40 of the ‘Direttorio’ is published in the second edition of the ‘Dell’arcano del mare’ (1661), but not, apparently, in the first edition. Either it, or something similar must have been available to Lucini or Bagononi, the publishers of the second edition of 1661.
This section of the ‘Direttorio’ is composed of early versions of important passages in Books One, Two and Five of ‘Dell’Arcano del mare’: a compendious study of naval theory and practice, treating of longitude and latitude and Great Circle sailing. They appear as drafts and revisions of twenty-eight chapters (lacking part of Chapters 19 and 20); but the order and headings of the chapters does not correspond with that of the ‘Dell’arcano del mare’.
The subjects in this part of the ‘Direttorio’ cover many of those in the ‘Dell’arcano del mare’: how to navigate along known and unknown
coasts; knowing which winds prevail; currents and the times of tides of places; how to use ‘Tables of Ephemerides’ for celestial observation; how to ascertain magnetic declination values with a meridian compass across the globe. In the field of cartography, Dudley considers how to determine latitudes and longitudes across the oceans, and explains the errors of “horizontal” or common charts in navigation. He proposes the use of mathematical instruments, as well as celestial observation, to accomplish correct navigation. Interestingly, he also proposes to establish longitude by the use of a clock “oriuolo mecuriale”. As in the ‘Dell’arcano del mare’, Dudley focusses on his preferred method of navigating by Longitude and Great Circle sailing - using his own invention of tables of “traversali sfericali”, and his charts based on what we now call “Mercator’s projection”, giving his latitudinal values.
Here the ‘Direttorio’ is heavily re-worked with some passages entirely re-written by the author in the margins, and in places makes direct reference to the text of the ‘Dell’arcano del mare’. This suggests that some parts of the ‘Direttorio’ may well have been written during, or after, the text for the ‘Dell’arcano del mare’, was being printed. On page 3 of Dudley’s autobiographical ‘proemio’, Dudley adds “come Arcano” – “like the Arcano”; on page 122, a reference to the “master of the Arcana, who holds the secret of longitude” is mentioned; further on pages 21- 22 when in discussing the method of using the “spiral” charts (Cap 8 and 9), Dudley refers to the “carte hydrografice del 2[do] libro” – “hydrographic charts in Book 2”, which is exactly where they appear in the published ‘Dell’arcano del mare”. These chapters of the ‘Direttorio’ are illustrated with numerous small drawings, and a number of larger diagrams, but the numbering of the figures, while referencing specific charts, do not correspond to the engraved figures in the published ‘Dell’arcano del mare’. It is possible that the references may correspond to the set of 268 manuscript charts now preserved in the BSB, in three volumes (Cod icon 138-140). Similarly, these chapters also contain text not found in the published ‘Dell’arcano del mare’. Dudley describes the likely effects of bad weather in high latitudes above 66°N, and the usual weather in temperate and tropical latitudes (pages 133-134); and ‘Cap XXIV’ contains Dudley’s explanation of how to find the North Star with a diagram (page115).
Pages
140-146 Addenda
Apparently new text, in which Dudley formulates his ideas on the application of science to navigation on the high seas: “la 2 da parte di q[ues]to libro tratta de naviagare con scienza in alto mare Cap 6”; incomplete sections on astronomical and military subjects; and a few additional notes in other hands.
Dudley and the Medicis
Robert Dudley (1573-1649) first published his ‘Secrets of the Sea’ in 1646 when he was 73. It was the culmination of his life’s work, and a testament to his close bond with one of the greatest ruling families of Italy, it is dedicated to Ferdinand II de’Medici. For his services to three Medici Grand Dukes of Tuscany (Ferdinand I, Cosimo II, and Ferdinand II), as philosopher, statesman, civil and military engineer, naval architect, hydrographer and geographer, mathematician and physician, Dudley was rewarded with status during his lifetime, a public funeral and a memorial monument upon his death.
Dudley was the son of the Earl of Leicester (the one time favourite of Elizabeth I) and Lady Douglas Sheffield, the widow of Lord Sheffield. Although born out of wedlock, Robert received the education and privileges of a Tudor nobleman. He seems to have been interested in naval matters from an early age, and in 1594, at the age of 21, he led an expedition to the Orinoco River and Guiana. He would later, like all good Tudor seamen, sack Cadiz, an achievement for which he was knighted.
His success upon the high-seas was not matched, unfortunately, by his luck at court, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century he was forced to flee, along with his cousin Elizabeth Southwell, to Europe. Eventually, in 1606, he ended up in Leghorn, Italy, which he set about turning into a great international naval and commercial seaport, in the service of Ferdinand I.
Dudley, successful at last, married his cousin, converted to Catholicism, helped Ferdinand wage war against the Mediterranean pirates, by designing and building a new fleet of fighting ships for the Italian navy, served as Grand Chamberlain to three Grand-Duchesses of Tuscany in succession: Maria Maddelena, widow of Cosimo II; then Christina of Lorraine, widow of Ferdinand I; then to Vittoria della Rovere, Princess of Urbino, and wife of Ferdinand II, who created Dudley Duke of Northumberland.
Gian Carlo de’ Medici (1611-1663)
It is not surprising that Dudley should dedicate his ‘Direttorio’ to his greatest patrons, Grand Duke Ferdinand II, and Gian Carlo de’ Medici. Nor that they should have owned examples of his greatest work, ‘Dell’arcano del mare’. What is very pleasing is that this working manuscript for the ‘Direttorio’, should also once have been in the possession of at least two other previous owners of both Gian Carlo’s first edition ‘Dell’arcano del mare’: Pietro Bigazzi, Florentine bookseller; and Sir John Temple Leader. Gian Carlo de’Medici shared Dudley’s passion for all things maritime. The second son of Cosimo II de’Medici, Gian Carlo was made “High Admiral of the Tuscan Navy” in 1638, held the title of “General of the Mediterranean Sea”, and appointed “General of the Spanish Seas” by Philip IV of Spain during the 40 years war. In 1644, he reluctantly
resigned his naval appointments when Pope Innocent X appointed him Cardinal. As a young and attractive man, he found the religious life a trial, and in 1655, the Pope returned him to Florence, after he became a bit too friendly with Queen Christina of Sweden. There he remained until his death, working in close collaboration with his brothers, in the government and cultural enrichment of the grand duchy. Gian Carlo was “passionate about science, letters and above all music. Founded the Accademia degli Immobili and contributed to the construction of the Teatro della Pergola, inaugurated in 1658.... and enrichment of the Galleria Palatina di Palazzo Pitti” (Cardella, Lorenzo. ‘Memorie storiche de’ cardinali della Santa Romana Chiesa’. Rome, Stamperia Pagliarini, 1793, VII, 51).
The close bond between Dudley and Gian Carlo is attested to by a letter written in September of 1638 from Dudley to Gian Carlo, who had just been appointed High Admiral of the Tuscan Navy, offering his homage and swearing his fealty, saying, that “if his nautical experience of many years merited employment in the service of his Highness, he, though old, would be always ready to obey the Admiral’s commands” (John Temple Leader in his ‘Life of Sir Robert Dudley,...’ 1895, pages 115-116).
Domenico Maria Manni, Pietro Bigazzi, and the Biblioteca Moreniana (Moreniana Library)
A Florentine bookdealer and collector, Pietro Bigazzi was also a librarian, and clerk of the Academia della Crusca, from 1854. His large library had come from a number of sources, including that of Domenico Maria Manni (1690-1788) director of the Bibilioteca Strozzi, who has supplied the four pages of bio-bibliography at the beginning of the ‘Direttorio’. See ‘Manoscritti e alcuni libri a stampa singolari esposti e annotati da Pietro Bigazzi’, Firenze, Tipografia Barbera, 1869, in which it is noted: “manuscript ceded, many years ago, to Mr. Temple Leader, a distinguished English gentleman, domiciled among us; solicitous repairer of the Tuscan Memoirs”.
The Biblioteca Moreniana “was created when the Provincial Deputation of Florence acquired the bibliographic collection that had belonged to Pietro Bigazzi.
The collection of literary writings, the majority of which were part of the library owned by Domenico Maria Manni and Domenico Moreni, consists mostly of records on Tuscan history and culture. Later, several other literary collections from well-known scholars and collectors of Tuscan antiquities were added. In 1942, the library was housed in Palazzo Medici Riccardi and opened to the public. Other historically significant collections of manuscripts were added later. Today the library is managed by the Metropolitan City of Florence” (Biblioteca Moreniana, online).
John Temple Leader (1879-1903)
Possessed both the first and second editions of Dudley’s ‘Dell’Arcano dell mare’, and this manuscript, the ‘Direttorio Marittimo’. He describes his relationship with Pietro Bigazzi, the Florentine bookdealer from whom he purchased all three items, in his biography of Dudley: “Long ago I bought from Signor Pietro Bigazzi, together with many other books which had belonged to Dudley, the first two volumes and the fourth of the ‘Arcano del Mare’, the first edition of his great work which was published at Florence in 1646-47. The third volume was wanting, perhaps lent to some friend who had forgotten to return it. Two or more years after this, Signor Bigazzi brought me, as a New Year’s gift, the missing volume of this very same incomplete set. He had discovered it on the low wall or ledge of the Palazzo Riccardi, and bought it from the salesman who had permission to sell his books there. My joy on thus unexpectedly receiving the missing part may be easily imagined by collectors and lovers of old books. The four volumes thus happily reunited after a long separation were in the old binding with the arms of a Cardinal of the Medici family” (pages 18-19).
Other Dudley manuscripts related to ‘Dell’arcano del mare’ Manni noted that the Palatina di Pitti library held two imperial folio volumes, in manuscript, of “Marine Treatises” by Dudley. They were on marine architecture, begun before 1610 in English, and continued by Dudley in Italian until about1635 (see Maria Enrica Vadala: ‘Il Trattato dell’architettura maritima di Roberto Dudley, storia e dispersione di un manoscritto’, Studi secenteschi, vol. 61 (2020), pp. 193-237) .
The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek holds several manuscripts by Dudley related to the ‘Dell’arcano del mare’, including: a of 268 manuscript charts, in three volumes, (Cod icon 138-140); and another relating to naval architecture and the conduct of naval warfare (Cod.icon 221) British Library (Add MS 22811).
Provenance:
1. Domenico Maria Manni (1690-1788), polymath, editor and publisher, also a member of Academia dell Crusca, and Director of the Biblioteca Strozzi, who has supplied 4 pages of bio-bibliography at the front of the manuscript;
2. Pietro Bigazzi, Florentine collector, librarian, and bookseller, a number of annotations in pencil, including on the flyleaf (“Ms citato del Targioni negli aggrandimenti Vole 10 pag.80”), sold to:
3. Sir John Temple Leader (1879-1903), who also bought Gian Carlo de’ Medici’s (1611-1663), first edition of ‘Dell’Arcano del mare’, and a second edition, from Bigazzi;
4. By descent to Richard Luttrell Pilkington Bethell, 3rd Baron Westbury (1903-1917), who sold Leader’s collections “piecemeal”.
The first atlas on Mercator’s Projection
DUDLEY, Robert
Dell’arcano del Mare di D. Ruberto
Dudleo Duca di Northumbria, e Conte di Warwich …
Publication
Florence, Giuseppe Cocchini, 1661.
Description
Six parts in two volumes, folio (550 by 425mm), two printed titles with engraved vignettes, traces of removed library stamps, double-page plate of the author’s patent of nobility, 216 engraved plates (of which 66 have volvelles or moveable parts), 146 engraved charts (of which 88 are double-page); contemporary calf, panelled, foliate roll-tool border, foliate corner and central tool, spine in seven compartments separated by raised bands.
The ‘Arcano de Mare’ is one the “greatest atlases of the world” (Wardington).
This sumptuous atlas, first published in 1646 when its author, Robert Dudley, was 73, was not only the first sea atlas of the world, but also the first to use Mercator’s projection; the earliest to show magnetic deviation; the first to show currents and prevailing winds; the first to expound the advantages of ‘Great Circle Sailing’ – the shortest distance between two points on a globe; and “perhaps less importantly the first sea-atlas to be compiled by an Englishman, all be it abroad in Italy” (Wardington)
Robert Dudley (1573–1649) was the son of the Earl of Leicester (the one time favourite of Elizabeth I) and Lady Douglas Sheffield, the widow of Lord Sheffield. Although born out of wedlock, Robert received the education and privileges of a Tudor nobleman. He seems to have been interested in naval matters from an early age, and in 1594, at the age of 21, he led an expedition to the Orinoco River and Guiana. He would later, like all good Tudor seamen, sack Cadiz, an achievement for which he was knighted.
His success upon the high-seas was not matched, unfortunately, by his luck at court, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century he was forced to flee, along with his cousin Elizabeth Southwell, to Europe. Eventually he ended up in Florence at the court of Grand Duke Ferdinand I of Tuscany, where he not only married his cousin and converted to Catholicism, but also help Ferdinand wage war against the Mediterranean pirates. In his spare time he set about his great life’s work: the ‘Arcano del Mare’.
The atlas is divided into six books, or sections: book one deals with longitude; book two covers errors in the then-existing sea charts, and includes the portolano for the Mediterranean and 15 general maps; book three deals with naval and military discipline, notably the former, and there is a long section on naval tactics, especially remarkable for a plan of the construction of a navy in five grades of vessel; book four describes the method of designing and building ships of the “Galerato” and “Galizaba” types and is concerned with naval architecture, giving the lines and dimensions of ships; book five is devoted entirely to navigation and methods of measuring the sun’s declination and the relative positions of the stars; book six contains the sea atlas.
For the beautifully engraved charts, Dudley employed the services of Antonio Francesco Lucini. Lucini states in the atlases that the work took him 12 years to complete and required 5,000lbs of copper. The charts are by English and other pilots, and it is generally accepted that the work was both scientific and accurate for the time. It is assumed that Dudley used the original charts of Henry Hudson, and for the Pacific Coast of America used his brother in-law Thomas Cavendish’s observations.
Contents:
VolumeI
Book 1. [4], 30pp., printed title with plate of a navigational instrument, [2] engraved facsimile of the Patent, 30 engravings on 28 sheets, 22 of which have moveable volvelles (of these, 2 have a string).
Book 2. 24pp., 15 engravings on nine sheets, 9 of which have volvelles, and 15 large engraved charts (six double-page or folding), of which four relate to America, five to the European coasts, four to Asia, and two to Africa.
Book 3. 25pp., 8 engraved plates on 6 sheets (three plates being of ships in battle formation, etc.) including four sheets with plates of fortifications and cities with walled defences.
Book 4. 12pp., 18 engravings on 14 sheets, of which seven are double page, all designs of ships in plan and in section.
Book 5. 26, [2]pp., 145 engravings on 89 sheets, 38 have moveable volvelles and additional 5 have a string.
Volume II
Book 6. [4], 41pp., title with plate of the Great Bear, 131 engraved charts (82 double-page), 58 covering Europe, Greenland, and Canada, 17 of Africa, 23 of Asia, and 33 of America.
Rarity
Rare. The last example to come on the market sold for £731,000 in Christies London, 2019, and, before that, $824,000 in the Frank Streeter sale, Christies New York, 2007.
Provenance
1. Sir John Temple Leader (1879-1903); first Villa Maiano, and then at the Castello di Vincigliata near Fiesole, which he purchased in 1855 and restored in neo-medieval style, furnishing and richly embellishing it with paintings and furniture of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Leader possessed both the first and second editions of Dudley’s ‘Dell’Arcano dell mare’, and Dudley’s manuscript, the ‘Direttorio Marittimo’. He describes his relationship with Pietro Bigazzi, the Florentine bookdealer from whom he purchased all three items, in his biography of Dudley: “Long ago I bought from Signor Pietro Bigazzi, together with many other books which had belonged to Dudley, the first two volumes and the fourth of the ‘Arcano del Mare’, the first edition of his great work which was published at Florence in 1646-47. The third volume was wanting, perhaps lent to some friend who had forgotten to return it. Two or more years after this, Signor Bigazzi brought me, as a New Year’s gift, the missing volume of this very same incomplete set. He had discovered it on the low wall or ledge of the Palazzo Riccardi, and bought it from the salesman who had permission to sell his books there. My joy on thus unexpectedly receiving the missing part may be easily imagined by collectors and lovers of old books. The four volumes thus happily reunited after a long separation were in the old binding with the arms of a Cardinal of the Medici family” (pages 18-19).
2. By descent to Richard Luttrell Pilkington Bethell, 3rd Baron Westbury (1903-1917), who sold Leader’s collections “piecemeal”.
THEVENOT, Melchisédec
Relations de divers voyages curieux, qui n’ont point esté publiées, ou qui on esté traduits d’Hacluyt, de Purchas, et d’autres voyageurs Anglais, Hollandois, Portugais, Allemands, Espagnols, et de quelques Persans, Arabes, et autres auteurs orientaux.
Publication
A Paris, chez André Cramoisy, 1666 - 1672.
Description
4 volumes in 2. Folio (334 by 230mm). Text in French and Greek, title-pages printed in red and black, 3 of the 4 title-pages match those for the fourth part, and are dated 1672 (see Brunet V, 810), with original Roman numerals (1663 and 1664) altered in early manuscript; full vellum over pasteboard, title in manuscript of the spines, some minor restoration.
Volume one, part I: pp. [8] 52, 40, 12, 80, 30, 24, 35 [1], 52, XXV [3] with 3 large folding engraved maps, and illustrations throughout; without Routier des Indes orientales, but with Description des Pyramides d’Egypte, and numerous tables related to China; part II: pp. [16] 20, 60, 128, 40, 16, 48, 4, 26 with 10 folding engraved plates including 2 large folding maps, and some folding tables.
Terre Avstrale
Thevenot’s monumental collection of voyages and exploration: a continuation of Haklyut and Purchas, and with the addition of accounts of exploration in the southern oceans, the East Indies, China and Arabia. His compilation was issued in five parts over more than thirty years: part I in 1663, part II in 1664, part III in 1666, part IV during 1672-1674, and part V in 1696. During the course of publication, the parts of the collection already printed were reissued with new title-pages in 1664, 1666, 1672 [as here], 1683, and 1696. Some sheets were reprinted for these reissues, and any two examples, issued before 1683, are rarely the same, with some “inserts” being more scarce than others. The current example is as originally issued, and seems to be composed of sheets for the 1666 re-issue, with new title-pages to parts I, II, and IV. It has been bound without some maps and inserts found in other examples, but is with others not so commonly found (see ‘Collation’).
Of all the truly legendary voyages undertaken in perilously small open boats, Pelsaert’s voyage from the Abrolhos to Bavatia in June and July of 1629 is an extraordinary feat of endurance in extremis. The current set includes the very rare ‘La Terre Avstrale decovverte par le Capitaine Pelsart, qui y fait naufrage’: just seven pages that recount the tragedy of shipwreck, the bloody savagery of mutiny, Pelsaert’s extraordinary journey, and the viscious aftermath of just retribution. The account is illustrated with the large folding map ‘Terre Avstrale decouverte l’an 1644’, after Tasman, here in its third state, with the Tropic of Capricorn and rhumb lines, 1672.
Other important maps include: the second printing of an important untitled map of the East Indies, after Teixeira’s chart which had been prepared in the 1640s for Portuguese cartographers. Drawn in the same style as a portolan, with no inland details, there are two insets showing the Ganges Delta and Chittagong, Hokkaidō is shown as an island north of Japan (”Iezo”); ‘Imperii Sinarum Nova Descriptio, a map of China’, including Korea, Taiwan and Japan, drawn after the work of Martino Martini as published by the Blaeus, but showing Hokkaidō joined to the mainland; and ‘Ioao Teixeira Cosmographo de Sua Magestade Afex em Lixboa O Anno de 1649’, an important chart of the entire east coast of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, the west coast of India and adjacent Indian Ocean islands, one of the few printed charts taken directly from Portuguese sources, based upon a 1649 portolan chart by João Teixeira, royal cosmographer of Portugal.
One of the great driving forces behind ‘Divers voyages’ was Thévenot’s desire to help France achieve her aim to increase colonial trade to compete with other European nations. The book aimed to gather together the most up-to-date practical knowledge on navigation and information on foreign countries.
Collation.
Part I: [4] leaves, 52 pages, with map of Colchide; 1-26; 17-40; 12 pages with map of India under Mogol; 80 pages; 30 pages; 1-10; 19-24; 17-24; 35 pages; [1] page; 56 pages with map of Australia; XXV; [1] with two plates of Egyptian mummies; bound without 2 plates with Caldean characters, and one map of Bassora. Part II: [8] leaves, 20 pages; 60 pages with 4 plates of Arabic coasts; 128 pages with map of Serloine; 40 pages with map of China and Philippines; 16 pages; 48 pages with plate justice en iapon between pages 45 and 46; 4 pages; 26 pages; bound without, 1 map of Arabia, 1 map of Pegu et Japon, and 2 leaves of text (pages 27-30, last part on China).
Volume two, part IV: La science des Chinois with its own title-page; pp. [4] 14, 24, 16, 16, 8, [4] 58, 40, 23 [1], 24, 4 with one folding engraved plate; part III: engraved frontispiece titled Ambassade des Hollandois a la Chine (1666); pp. [8] 68, 216, 12 with 15 engraved plates, including 2 large folding maps, and one folding table.
Part IV: [2] leaves, 14 pages; 24 pages; 16 pages; 16 pages; 8 pages; 4 pages; map of the Red Sea; 46 pages with 63 plates and pages 47-58 of text; 23 pages; 24 pages; 4 pages, 2 plates with animals and plants from China; bound without: frontispiece particulier du voyage du sieur Acarette, ??? 23 of 24 pages of Viaggio del P. Grueber including the plate of the Chinese alphabet, with only the French translation of the account and map of Ethiopia. Part III: 1 leaf; [3] leaves; 28 pages; pages 31-68 with plate of the route (bound between pages 26 and 27 of following work); map of China; 216 pages; 12 pages; 10 plates not called for by Brunet, from the Voyage des ambassadeurs bound at the end; bound without the frontispiece to the part III, 2 leaves of text at the end of the first avis, 2 plates from the Voyage des ambassadeurs.
References
Brunet, t. V, col. 810-813; Sabin 95333.
66,500 AUD
Melchisedech Thévenot (1620-1692) was a French diplomat, scientist, and travel writer. He was a scholar with interests in mathematics, physics, and medicine, acting as the patron of several early scientific societies and most notably contributing to the formation of the Académie des Sciences. His early career included two missions to Italy in the 1640s and 1650s, and it was there that he first developed an interest in the study of Oriental languages. In 1663, he published the first part of his ‘Relations de Divers Voyages’, a work that would secure his reputation as one of the most important travel compilers of the seventeenth century. He would go on to publish a second and third part in 1666, a fourth in 1672, and a final fifth part was being assembled in 1692 when Thévenot died, and would not be published until 1696.
Provenance:
1. With the Ex libris on two frontispieces of the convent of the Discalced Carmelites in Como (suppressed in 1792).
2. Early manuscript purchase annotation on the front paste-down of volume one of the Como bookseller Pasquale Ostinelli (1804).
COOK, Captain James; and George William ANDERSON, pseud.
A new, authentic, and complete Edition of Captain Cook’s Voyages round the World. Undertaken and performed by Royal Authority. Containing the Whole of his first, second, third, and last Voyages...
Publication London, Printed for Alex. Hogg … and sold by all other Booksellers and News-carriers in the World, [c1785].
Description Folio (416 by 268 mm), pp 361–368, with text in double columns and two accompanying copperplate etchings (‘A Human Sacrifice, in a Morai, in Otaheithe; in the presence of CaptN. Cook etc.’ by Lodge; ‘Mr. Doughty beheaded by order of Sir Francis Drake, at port St. Indian, on the Coast of Patagonia’ by Goldar after Dodd); uncut in the original blue printed wrappers, creased where previously folded, edges a little ragged, spine chipped, but stitching intact.
References Beddie 19; Cox I, 22; Sabin 52455 (all only giving the book’s final title, A new, authentic, and complete Collection of Voyages round the World, rather than as here).
1,500 AUD
This folio contains the 44th installment of the account of Captain Cook’s voyages produced by G.W.Anderson in 1785. During his three great voyages on HMS Endeavour, Resolution, Adventure and Discovery, Captain James Cook made a revolutionary contribution to the geographical understanding of the Southern Hemisphere. Unsurprisingly, upon his return the public appetite for the stories of his adventures was huge. In response to this demand, G.W. Anderson produced his complete edition of Cook’s journeys, in a variety of formats including large compendia, and smaller collections. The account was also serialised into 80 six-pence parts to make it accessible to all the “many Thousands of Persons who would wish to peruse the valuable Discoveries”. Within the series appear original accounts recorded by Cook himself, or other sailors on his travels, as well as frequent additional material supplied from other sources to give added depth to the narrative.
This issue is comprised of four double-sided and double-columned pages of text, describing Cook’s experiences in China and Macau, as well as two full-page copperplate engravings. The first of these vivid illustrations depict a human sacrifice witnessed by Cook in Tahiti, and the second shows the equally striking image of the earlier explorer, Thomas Doughty, beheaded on the orders of Sir Francis Drake. The travels of Drake, alongside those of some other British explorers, are also included in Anderson’s account. It is not entirely clear why these images are included here, in the 44th installment, but they certainly intensify the portrayal of the “extraordinary and important Voyages and Discoveries” described throughout the series. The entire collection of all 80 issues contain a total of 124 such engravings, and 31 maps and charts. The serialised edition was produced for popular consumption at a cheap price, and for this reason the individual issues were often subject to neglect and damage from handling, making the survival of this example a rare find.
BIGGE, John Thomas; and Governor Lachlan MACQUARIE
Collection of Parliamentary Papers related to John Thomas Bigge’s Inquiry into the State of the Colony of New South Wales.
Publication London, the House of Commons, 1822-1828.
Description 5 volumes. Folio (330 by 220mm); 4 in original blue printed paper wrappers, each stabbed and sewn as issued.
9,500 AUD
Bigge’s damning report of Macquarie’s tenure as emancipist Governor of the Colony of New South Wales
Comprising
- ‘New South Wales. ... A Copy of the Instructions Given by Earl Bathurst to Mr. Bigge, on his proceeding to New South Wales; viz. Copy of a Letter from Earl Bathurst to John Thomas Bigge, Esq. dated the 6th of Janurary 1819. Copy of a further Letter from Earl Bathurst to John Thomas Bigge, Esq. dated the 6th January 1819’. London, Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be Printed, 7th July, 1823. Number 532.
Commissioning Bigge’s inquiry: “While transportation to New South Wales is thus applied as an adequate punishment for the most heinous offences, it unfortunately, at the same time, carries with it, in public estimation, so little of apprehension in any proportion to the guilt of convicts, that numerous applications are made from those who are sentenced to imprisonment for minor transgressions, that they may be allowed to participate in the punishment to which the greatest offenders are condemned” (page 4).
Provenance: Colonial Office Library, ink stamp page 1, and annotated on last page.
- ‘New South Wales. Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry into the State of the Colony of New South Wales’. Ordered, by The House of Commons, to be Printed, 19 June 1822. Number 448. First issue, including the libel of William Wentworth.
- ‘Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry on the Judicial Establishments of New South Wales, and Van Diemen’s Land’. Ordered, by The House of Commons, to be Printed, 21 February 1823. 33.
- ‘Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry, on the State of Agriculture and Trade in the Colony of New South Wales’. Ordered, by The House of Commons, to be Printed, 13 March 1823. Number 136.
- ‘New South Wales... No. 1 – Copy of a Report, by the late Major General Macquarie, on the Colony of New South Wales, to Earl Bathurst; in July 1822. No. 2 – Extract of a Letter, from Major General Macquarie to Earl Bathurst, in October 1823; in Answer to certain Part of the Report of Mr. Commissioner Bigge, on the State of the said Colony’. Ordered, by The House of Commons, to be Printed, 25 June 1823. Number 477.
In 1819, John Thomas Bigge accepted an appointment as commissioner of inquiry into the colony of New South Wales. His arrival in the colony came as quite a shock to Governor Lachlan Macquarie, who, since 1810, had governed with an emancipist policy that was ahead of his time. He had asserted “a complete personal control, had converted New South Wales from a rebellion-torn penitentiary to a settlement of substance. In
his personality were mixed a broad sense of justice and a humanity far ahead of Georgian concepts, manifest in his willingness to readmit emancipated convicts to society without any regard for their past. To Bigge such an attitude was incompatible with Tory concepts of the purpose of the criminal law and, with added prejudice from his experience in slave colonies, he assailed Macquarie’s methods vehemently. The governor, long unused to a superior, affronted by the challenge to his authority and resentful of Bigge’s frequent proposals for changes, was not prepared to submit quietly” (Bennett).
Bigge’s resulting three extensive reports were, in Macquarie’s opinion, a “false, vindictive and malicious” indictment of his tenure. His response was slow to come, as he waited until all three reports were published, but when it did, in 1823, it was another five years before it was published, as here. Nevertheless, history has vindicated Macquarie.
Collectively, Bigge’s reports, prompted the insertion of clauses into the New South Wales Act that set up limited constitutional government through a Legislative Council, to establish Van Diemen’s Land as a separate colony, to enable extensive legal reforms, and to make new provisions for the reception of convicts from England.
WENTWORTH, William Charles, and Sir Ralph DARLING
Parliamentary Papers related to the dispute between Wentworth and Darling.
Publication London, The House of Commons, 1830 - 1835.
Description 2 volumes. Folio; one disbound, one with original blue printed paper wrappers, each stabbed and sewn as issued.
Dimensions 350 by 220mm. (13.75 by 8.75 inches).
References Ferguson, 1355; Persse, ‘Australian Dictionary of Biography’, online.
3,800 AUD
First inklings of self-government and nationhood for Australia
Comprising
- ‘New South Wales. Papers explanatory of the Charges brought against Lieut. Gen. Darling, by William Charles Wentworth, Esq.’ London, Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 1 July 1830. Number 586.
- ‘Report from Select Committee on the Conduct of General Darling, while Governor of New South Wales. With the Minutes of Evidence and Appendix’. London, Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 1 September 1835. Number 580.
Official parliamentary papers, recording a biased account of the famous case brought by William Wentworth, an early proponent for Australian self-government, against the then Governor, Sir Ralph Darling, but essential, only offering Darling’s defence, and not Wentworth’s.
The young William Wentworth (1790-1872), led a peripatetic youth. However, his “adventurous spirit, drought, and the desire to discover new pastures led him in May 1813, in company with William Lawson, Gregory Blaxland, four servants, four horses, and five dogs, to take part in the first great feat of inland exploration, the crossing of the Blue Mountains”. The ease with which they accomplished their mission, which established a stock route, gave impetus to great pastoral expansion.
Passionate about Australia, in 1819, Wentworth published ‘A Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and Its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen’s Land, With a Particular Enumeration of the Advantages Which These Colonies Offer for Emigration and Their Superiority in Many Respects Over Those Possessed by the United States of America’. His book did stimulate emigration, and was reissued in revised and enlarged editions in 1820 and 1824. Intent on achieving freedom of the press, trial by jury, and taxation by consent, in the colony of New South Wales, the third edition of the vehemently attacked the report of Commissioner Bigge, who had been censorious of Governor Macquarie’s emancipist policies and fair dealings.
In 1826, Wentworth seized on the death of a Private Suggs, in custody, as a pretext for attacking the autocratic government of Governor Ralph Darling (1772-1858). He alleged the illegality of Darling’s act, and demanded his recall to England. The affair rapidly developed into a bitter feud, and the resulting cases occupied the Supreme Court through 1828 and 1829. All of which is recorded in these papers. Eventually, Darling served out his tenure and departed for England in 1831.
By taking up the “fight against autocracy and by his imperious courage and oratory in the defence of emancipists at the Bar Wentworth had awakened a political instinct among the smaller people of Sydney and become their hero. He had touched both journalism and the Bar
with the fire of his brilliance and given them definition, direction, and the vision of greatness: he may justly be called their prophet in the Australian nation, if not the prophet of that nation itself. The larger fight remained: for the great goal of self-government. But, even as the people of Sydney were flocking out to Vaucluse to join with the popular hero in celebration of the tyrant’s departure, changes in Wentworth’s own life and activities were beginning to cause disillusion among many who only partially understood his aims. With the swelling tide of immigration into New South Wales, the exclusive-emancipist issue was receding into the background of politics. So fast were events moving that in 1835, when Darling was cleared of Wentworth’s charges and knighted, there were few in Sydney who showed concern” (Persse).
The most important nineteenth-century Armenian atlas
Աստուածատուր Վ. Աւագեան [AVAKIAN, Astvatsatur V.].
Ատլաս կամ աշխարհացոյց
տախտակք Ի պէտս ազգային դպրոցաց [Atlas or World Map for the National Schools]. Յօրինեաց
եւ ծրագրեաց Հ. Աստուածատուր Վ. Աւագեան ի Մխիթարեան
Ուխտէն [Devised and Created by Astvatsatur V. Avakian of the Mekhitarist Monastery].
Publication
Vienna, Pashtpan S. Astvacacni and B. Tpagrovatian for the Mekhitarist Monastery, 1860.
Description
Quarto (275 by 205 mm): 2ff. half title and title, 21 double-page lithograph maps in blue with black letter punch text and original hand colour in outline, half title and title, and a few early maps with spotting, bound, half maroon cloth over brown marbled paper boards, rubbed.
References
National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia (Yerevan) - Fundamental Scientific Library: AIV/19; Johannes DÖRFLINGER and Helga HÜHNEL, Atlantes Austriaci: Österreichische Atlanten, 1. Band: 15611918 (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1995), Mech / Awa A 2 (pp. 703-4).
28,500 AUD
One of the great milestones of Armenian language cartography, being the first Armenian school atlas and the second ever Armenian world atlas. It also contains one of the earliest maps to depict a proposed independent state of ‘Armenia’ cleaved out of the Ottoman Empire, a politically incendiary notion and powerful rhetorical device of the ‘Armenian National Awakening’. The atlas was made by by Astvatsatur V. Avakian, a monk at the
Mekhitarist Monastery in Vienna, one of the world’s most important Armenian Catholic missions, and printed by the monastery’s press. The Mekhitarist Order of Vienna was an organization of the Armenian Catholic Church, that in the 1770s split off from the eponymous order based in Venice. Its mandate was education, and vast resources were expended on writing, drafting and translating religious, literary and scientific texts for the intellectual betterment of Armenian children and adults, both in Ottoman Empire and throughout the large Armenian global diaspora. Avakian himself had also been responsible for two books in Armenian, ‘Exploring Natural History’ (1854) and ‘The Story of the Stuart Kings of Scotland and Queen Mary Stuart’ (1861).
The monastery assembled one of the finest Armenian libraries in the world, and since 1812 operated a printing press in Vienna to issue its own works. The breadth and quality of the press’s production contributed to the development and preservation of Armenian culture worldwide. The present atlas was one of the most technically sophisticated works ever published there, and was intended to educate Armenian high school students on world geography. It came on the heels of the first ever Armenian world atlas, which was issued in by the rival Venetian Mekhitarist Order in 1849. While the large folio Venetian atlas was far grander, it included only ten maps, and it would be many decades until any other Armenian atlas was produced with more maps than contained here.
21 beautifully-rendered maps make up the atlas with depictions of continents, countries and larger regions, but curiously lacking a world map. Several of the maps are the earliest, or amongst the earliest, Armenian language maps of the places depicted. Cartographically, the maps in the atlas are not based on original surveys, but neither are they direct copies of other European maps. Rather they seem to be adapted from them, with Avakian influenced by the popular German school atlases of Stieler, Sydow and Perthes. They are rendered in an artistic style and made by an extraordinary printing technique that shows the strong influence, if not the direct involvement, of the brilliantly original Vienna cartographer Franz Raffelsperger.
The Maps
1. ԵՒՐՈՊԱ. [Europe].
2. ԱՍԻԱ. [Asia].
3. ԱՓՐԻԿԷ. [Africa].
4. ՀՅՈՒՍԻՍԱՅԻՆ ԱՄԵՐԻԿԱ. [North America].
5. ՀԱՐԱՎԱՅԻՆ ԱՄԵՐԻԿԱ. [South America].
6. ԱՒՍՏՐԱԼԻԱ. [Australia].
7. ՖՈՐԹՈՒԿԱԼ եւ ՍՊԱՆԻԱ. [Portugal and Spain].
8. ԳԱՂՂԻԱ. [France].
9. ԱՆԳՂԻԱ. [England].
10 ԻՏԱԼԻԱ. [Italy].
11. ԳԵՐՄԱՆԻԱ. [Germany].
12. ԱՒՍՏՐԻԱԿԱՆ ՊԵՏՈՒԹԻԻՆ [Austrian Empire].
13. ԲՐՈՒՍԻԱ. [Prussia].
14. ԲԵՂԳԻԱ, ՀՈԼԼԱՆՏԱ… [Belgium, Holland and the Northwestern German States).
15. ՌՈՒՍԻԱ ԵԻՐՈՊԻԱՅ. [Russia in Europe].
16. ՅՈՒՆԱՍՏԱՆ
17. ՕՍՄԱՆԵԱՆ
18. ՕՍՄԱՆԵԱՆ
. [Greece and the Greek Islands].
[Ottoman Empire in Europe].
[Ottoman Empire in Asia].
This important map depicts the populous part of the Ottoman Empire in Asia, namely Anatolia, the Levant and Iraq, and embraces almost all of the territories of the Armenian ancestral homeland. The last independent Armenian state, the Kingdom of Cilia, fell to the Ottomans in 1375, and from then on the Armenians lived under foreign rulers. In the mid-nineteenth century, the majority of Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire. Many Armenians in rural Eastern Anatolia lived in poverty and
had difficult relations with their Turkish and Kurdish neighbours. Conversely, many of the Armenian communities in the cities, especially in places such as Istanbul, Smyrna (Izmir), Beirut and Aleppo, were prosperous and relatively well-integrated into broader society.
Indeed, during the Tanzimat Era (1839-75), Armenians were accorded full legal rights and were soon serving at the highest levels of the Ottoman government. Ironically, during the same period, the regime of Sultan Abdul Hamid II presided over the ‘Hamidian Massacres’ of 1894–96, during which hundreds of thousands of Armenians were murdered in Eastern Anatolia. Then during World War I, the Young Turk regime turned on the Empire’s Armenian communities, enacting the Armenian Genocide (1915-23), which resulted in the deaths of one and a half million Armenians. The survivors fled abroad, greatly increasing the size of the Armenian diaspora, while virtually no Armenians were left in their traditional homeland. While the First Republic of Armenia (1918-20) briefly saw the revival of first independent Armenian state in almost 550 years, at the end of the chaos that followed the war, only the Yerevan region was left to the Armenians, forming the Armenian SSR in 1920, a part of the Soviet Union.
19. ՀԱՅԱՍՏԱՆ
[Armenia].
This is the most important map in the atlas, as it is one of the very first maps to depict a proposed future Armenian state, superimposed over a current-day map of Eastern Anatolia and northwestern Persia. In creating the map, Avakian was clearly inspired by the ‘Armenian National Awakening’, the mid-nineteenth century movement that sought self-determination for the Armenian people.
The Awaking called for Armenians to be given full civil rights throughout the Ottoman Empire, while Armenians living in areas of a majority Armenian population, such as in Eastern Anatolia, were to be accorded local self-government within the Empire. Some Armenians, however, particularly those in the European diaspora, called for the complete secession of the Armenian Highlands of Eastern Anatolia from the Ottoman Empire, so as to create the first independent Armenian nation in almost 500 years. Such zeal led to the rise of Armenian militant groups that violently fought the Ottoman state with the view towards obtaining their ultimate objective.
The present map also assumes such a radical stance, clearly showing ‘Armenia’ as a distinct political entity, carved out of the Ottoman Empire in Eastern Anatolia and the extreme northwestern corner of Persia. This ‘country’ features the printed name ՀԱՅԱՍՏԱՆ (‘Armenia’), running across the area, while the ‘national’ boundaries are demarcated in pink manuscript. The country, roughly centred upon the city of Erzurum, extends down to
take in Lake Van and eastwards to western slopes of Mount Ararat, the biblically famous volcanic massif that is the Armenian national symbol. ‘Armenia’ is show here to take in all of the Ottoman Eyelet, or province, of Erzurum and part of the Eyelet of Van. Curiously, the map does not show ‘Armenia’ to include any of the traditionally Armenian territory then held by Russia, perhaps in deference to Russia’s support for the Armenian cause. Covering the heartland of ancient Armenia, including many areas that then had a majority Armenian population, the map is a powerful device advocating an independent Armenia.
20. ՊԱՐՍԿԱՍՏԱՆ,
[Iran, Afghanistan and Belochistan].
21. ՀՆԴԿԱՍՏԱՆ. [India].
Exceptionally rare: we have been able to trace only two institutional examples of the present second edition of Avakian’s atlas, the first being issued three years prior and of similar rarity. These are held by the Fundamental Scientific Library at the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia (Yerevan) and the Charents Museum of Literature and Arts (Yerevan). Moreover, we cannot trace any sales records for either edition of the atlas.
Australia, Oceania, World
[Ottoman atlas]
Publication [Istanbul, c1914].
Description
A separately published blank Ottoman atlas (245 by 188mm) with maps of Australia, Oceania and the World. 8°, 36-42 pp., facing pages marked with the same number, with colour lithographed plates, printed covers, stapled. Small tears in margins, some sheets including the wrappers loose, staple rusty and broken, soft folds, slightly age-toned and stained, some ink staining on the wrappers, otherwise in a good used condition.
1,600 AUD
An unusual Ottoman geography exercise book, focusing on Oceania, Australia and the World, was published for students. Each map is accompanied on the opposite page by a blank grid of equal size, upon which students were meant to duplicate the map in their own hand. The maps are not marked with any names nor locations.
The maps showcase Oceania, South East Asia, Australia, Map of the World with marked, what we surmise is the historical trading area of the Ottoman Empire, Western hemisphere, Eastern Hemisphere, and the two pole projections.
The atlas was advertised as a separate publication in a 1914 Ottoman school atlas showing maps of Africa. According to this, it was published as a part of a series of 6 pamphlets with maps of Europe (2 pamphlets), Asia (1 pamphlet), Africa (2 pamphlets) and Oceania (1 pamphlet). The publications had altogether 42 maps and had a sequel pagination.
This pamphlet with maps numbered between 36 and 42 was possibly the last in the series.
We could not trace any institutional copies on Worldcat.
Maps
SALAMANCA, Antonio
[Untitled World Map].
Publication
Rome, Antonio Lafreri, 1564.
Description
Double-page engraved map on a cordiform projection.
Dimensions
340 by 520mm (13.5 by 20.5 inches).
References Shirley 91.
135,000 AUD
First published by Salamanca in about 1550, and based on the doublecordiform world map by Gerard Mercator of 1538. This issue, with Lafreri’s imprint, dates from after Lafreri had taken control of their joint publishing business in 1563.
Like its predecessors, Salamanca’s striking map “bisects the world on the Equator, with the southern hemisphere featuring a mysterious continent centred on the South Pole, centuries before the discovery of Antarctica. Following Mercator, Salamanca showed the Americas as being two continents, labelled north and south, and being entirely separate from Asia. A large ice-mass is shown covering the world’s Arctic regions. Salamanca’s rendering is distinguished from Mercator’s by his use of stipple engraving for the seas. Beyond being a most elegant artistic concept, cordiform maps were considered to be imbued with great emblematic significance by contemporary humanists, in that they linked the human heart, the innate source of reason, with the grander theatre of the world of human action” (Giorgio Mangani: Imago Mundi 50, 1998).
Lafreri, arguably Italy’s most influential and successful commissioner and publisher of maps, was in fact a Frenchman from Burgundy, born Antoine du Pérac Lefréry of Besançon, who settled in Rome in 1540 and in 1544 established his business as an engraver and print seller in the Via del Perione.
From 1553 onwards, Lafreri partnered with an established dealer, Antonio Salamanca, until the latter’s death in 1562. Lafreri was primarily a dealer and publisher, rather than an artisan in his own right. He carried in stock the prints made not only by his own establishment, but by others, and his own name appears comparatively seldom in the atlases attributed to him.
Salamanca and Lafreri’s double-cordiform world
De Jode’s rare world map
DE JODE, Cornelis
Totius Orbis Cogniti Universalis
Descriptio Cui etiam eandem orbis terrae delineationem, duorum circulorum capacitate huius descriptionis mundi longitudinem documento admirantibus adiecimus anno MDLXXXIX.
Publication [Antwerp, Gerard de Jode, 1593].
Description Double-page engraved map.
Dimensions 425 by 566mm (16.75 by 22.25 inches).
References van der Krogt 0001:32B; Shirley 165.
45,000 AUD
A map of the world by Cornelis de Jode and published by his father, Gerard.
The map shows two views of the world. The main chart is a world map on a rectangular projection. Points of interest include the portrayal of the gigantic southern continent ‘Terra Australis’, believed to represent the rest of the landmass implied by the passage of Tierra del Fuego, reaching up to near New Guinea. The South American continent is disproportionately wide. The Strait of Anian separates America and Asia. The two small hemispheric maps to either side of the title show the western and eastern hemispheres on Roger Bacon’s circular projection.
The imprint at the lower edge states that the map was created by Cornelis de Jode in November 1589 at the Academy of Douai, and published or printed by his father Gerard de Jode.
The map appeared in the second edition of the de Jodes’ atlas ‘Speculum orbis terrae’. The ‘Speculum’ was first published in 1578 by Gerard de Jode (1509-1591) with text by Daniel Cellarius. It was designed to compete with Abraham Ortelius’s atlas, ‘Theatrum Orbis Terrarum’, which had been published eight years earlier. Ortelius used his influence to disrupt de Jode’s application for a royal privilege. By the time this was finally granted, seven years after the publication of the ‘Theatrum’, Ortelius’s work had become so popular that de Jode’s atlas did not sell well, despite the accuracy and clarity of his maps.
Gerard’s son Cornelis (1558-1600) continued his father’s publishing business after studying at Douai. He produced an enlarged edition of the ‘Speculum’ in 1593, which Gerard had been planning before his death. Either Cornelis or Gerard was the first person to make a globe following the geography of Mercator in the southern hemisphere; no copies of it survive to provide evidence.
Although sales of de Jode’s work were less than ideal, the atlas was evidently held in high regard, with several contemporaries citing its importance alongside the atlases of Mercator and Ortelius. Few examples of either edition of the ‘Speculum’ have survived, making the maps within a rarity.
De Jode’s striking world map on a north and south polar projection
DE JODE, Cornelis
Hemispheriu ab Aequinoctiali
Linea ad Circulu Poli Arctici.
Hemispheriu ab Aequinoctiali
Linea, ad Circulu Poli Atarctici.
Publication Antwerp, 1593.
Description
Double page engraved map, hand-coloured, small tear to upper margin skilfully repaired.
Dimensions
320 by 520mm (12.5 by 20.5 inches).
References Shirley World 184.
75,000 AUD
One of the two new world maps published in the final edition of De Jode’s ‘Speculum’ in 1593.
The present map is extremely distinctive, drawn as two hemispheres on North and South polar projections, a style rarely used by sixteenth century cartographers. Drawing on a range of sources, particularly Guillaume Postel’s 1581 ‘Polo Aptata Nova Charta Universi’ and an anonymous set of gores from c1587, De Jode’s map demonstrates not only the wealth of geographical insight generated by early European exploration, but also the limits of contemporary knowledge. On the one hand, the Northern hemisphere presents the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and North America in great detail. The cartography is generally accurate, most major cities are named and relief is shown pictorially. On the other hand, however, India is shaped quite irregularly, and several of the south-east Asian islands are incorrect, either in name or in location.
Similarly, while the American coast is well-drawn, the continent lacks many details, having not yet been thoroughly explored and mapped. It also contains a few mythical cities, such as Quivira and Civola. Similarly, although the land shown around the circumference of the Southern hemisphere is generally accurate, the second half of the map is dominated by the evidently erroneous ‘Terra Australis Incognita’. As a result of the polar hemisphere projection, the land closest to the Equator has been compressed; consequently, there appears to be little space between Asia and America, with Japan equidistant between the two continents.
The map appeared in the last edition of the de Jodes’ atlas ‘Speculum orbis terrae’. The ‘Speculum’ was first published in 1578 by Gerard de Jode (1509-1591) with text by Daniel Cellarius. It was designed to compete with Abraham Ortelius’ atlas, ‘Theatrum Orbis Terrarum’, which had been published eight years earlier. Ortelius had used his influence to disrupt de Jode’s application for a royal privilege. By the time this was finally granted, seven years after the publication of the ‘Theatrum’, Ortelius’ work had become so popular that de Jode’s atlas did not sell well, despite the accuracy and clarity of his maps. His son Cornelis (1558-1600) continued his father’s publishing business after studying at Douai. He produced an enlarged edition of the ‘Speculum’ in 1593, which Gerard had been planning before his death.
The present map appeared for the first time in that edition, along with another world map (Shirley 165). The individual maps may have been issued separately without text, prior to the publication of the atlas. Although sales of de Jode’s work were less than ideal, the atlas was evidently held in high regard, with several contemporaries citing its importance alongside the atlases of Mercator and Ortelius. Few examples of either edition of the ‘Speculum’ have survived, making the maps within a rarity.
The first printed map of Alaska and the first map to focus on “Australia”
DE JODE, Cornelis
Novae Guineae Formus and Situs; Quivirae Regnu[m], cum alijs versus Borea[lem].
Publication
Antwerp, Arnold Corunx for the widow & heirs of Gerard de Jode, 1593.
Description
Two engraved maps on a double-page mapsheet.
Dimensions (Australia) 330 by 210mm (13 by 8.25 inches). (Alaska) 340 by 230mm (13.5 by 8,.75 inches).
References
Burden 82. For ‘Quivirae Regnu[m]’, see Falk, Alaskan Maps, 1593-2, p.14, xiii; Rey, Unveiling the Arctic, p.565; Wagner, Northwest Coast of America, no. 171, p.104. For ‘Novae Guinea’, see Allen, p.6061; Harris, p.125; NLA, p.92; Schilder 13, ill. p.269; Suarez, p.60-61; Tooley, Landmarks of Mapmaking, p.247; Tooley, Mapping of Australia, 385.
35,000 AUD
Two seminal maps of the Pacific: the earliest map focused on Alaska, the Northwest and upper California, and “the first printed map of Australia” (Tooley).
In the map of North America the west coast is reasonably well delineated, and de Jode has chosen to include the mythical Strait of Anian separating America from Asia. The existence of a body of water between the two continents had been suggested but not proved when the map was made. Despite the channel between the continents, the figures populating America are outside tents and domed buildings which are distinctly Asian in appearance. It was widely believed that America was first settled by migrants from Asia, as confirmed by an inscription on the map comparing Native Americans to Tartars. De Jode obscures the lack of internal geographical knowledge of the continent with two large strategically placed cartouches.
At the top of the map are four imaginary islands. Mercator believed that four great rivers ran into a central whirlpool between these four islands. The magnetic north pole is marked by the edge of a black rock at the left edge of the map, which supposedly stood between the islands.
The map of Australasia shows part of New Guinea, and a speculative Australian coastline. New Guinea was named by the Spanish explorer Íñigo Ortíz de Retes in 1545, who thought that the landscape and people were similar to those of the Guinea region of Africa: the Latin text on New Guinea explains this. Australia is populated by a hunter chasing real and mythical beasts.
It was still a largely unexplored part of the world, with only the reports of a few Spanish and Portuguese voyages to draw on. The text on New Guinea warns that observers are still not sure whether it is an island or continent, but calls Australia “a fifth continent”, indicating an awareness of its size.
The two maps are rare, with only one known state. They appeared only in the second and final edition of the ‘Speculum’ in 1593.
The ‘Speculum’ was first published in 1578 by Gerard de Jode (1509-1591) with text by Daniel Cellarius. It was designed to compete with Abraham Ortelius’ atlas, ‘Theatrum Orbis Terrarum’, which had been published eight years earlier. Ortelius used his influence to disrupt de Jode’s application for a royal privilege. By the time this was finally granted, seven years after the publication of the ‘Theatrum’, Ortelius’ work had become so popular that de Jode’s atlas did not sell well, despite the accuracy and clarity of his maps.
His son Cornelis (1558-1600) continued his father’s publishing business after studying at Douai. He produced an enlarged edition of the ‘Speculum’ in 1593, which Gerard had been planning before his death. Either Cornelis or Gerard was the first person to make a globe following the geography of Mercator in the southern hemisphere; no copies of it survive to provide evidence.
Although sales of de Jode’s work were less than ideal, the atlas was evidently held in high regard, with several contemporaries citing its importance alongside the atlases of Mercator and Ortelius. Few examples of either edition of the ‘Speculum’ have survived, making the maps within a rarity.
LINSCHOTEN, Jan Huyghen; and Arnold and Henrik Floris van LANGREN
Exacta & Accurata Delineatio cum Orarum Maritimarum tum etjam locorum terrestrium quae in Regionibus China, Cauchinchina, Camboja sive Champa, Syao, Malacca, Arracan & Pegu.
Publication
Amsterdam, Cornelis Claesz., 1595 [but 1596].
Description Engraved map with fine original hand-colour.
Dimensions 520 by 381mm (20.5 by 15 inches).
References Suarez, ‘Early Mapping of Southeast Asia’, 1999, page 178.
32,000 AUD
“from the most correct charts that the Portuguese pilots make use of” (Linschoten)
A map of the East Indies and the southern Pacific, showing China, Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Borneo, Korea (as an island), Japan, Java, and Beach, oriented to the west. First published in Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s (1563–1611) ‘Itinerario, Voyage ofte Schipvaert van J.H. van Linschoten’, published by Cornelis Claesz in 1596. The coastal and navigational details are taken from the Portuguese portolans copied by Linschoten. It is exceptionally detailed; the first published map of the area to be prepared primarily from Portuguese sources, but also drawing on Petrus Plancius.
The map’s “representation of Japan and Southeast Asia, except for the Philippines, was based on the work of the Portuguese cartographer Fernao Vaz Dourado, while the depiction of China is taken from Barbuda. The Philippines appears to be a variant of the Lasso model, and is most obviously characterized by its perculiar east-west orientation for Palawin… Linschoten labels the island of Seram as “Os Papuas”. Reinforcing Plancius’s confusion of Seram with the newly-emerging land of New Guinea. His depiction of New Guinea, however, proved influential at a later date; Thomas Forrest, who explored New Guinea in the service of the East India Company in 1774-76, cited the Linschoten map as proof that the islands of New Britain discovered by William Dampier were one and the same archipelago as the Solomon Islands. He reproduced the New Guinea section from the Linschoten map and compared with that of Dampier: “It is to be regretted, that Dampier, who sailed to New Britain in the Roebuck 1699, had not seen Linschoten’s map. Such a guide might have induced him to put into harbours which he did not visit, not knowing they existed: for the least additional light to a discoverer may be productive of important consequences” (Suarez).
The map also records information from the travel accounts of Marco Polo, including the “beach provincia auriferain”, at roughly where the northwest coast of Australia would eventually be discovered.
From the first book of Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s ‘Itinerario’, the first printed work to include precise sailing instructions for the East Indies. It allowed Dutch merchants to circumvent the Portuguese stranglehold on trade to the East. It was of such economic utility that “it was given to each ship sailing from Holland to India” and soon became “the navigator’s vade mecum for the Eastern seas” (Penrose).
The mapmaker
Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (1563–1611) left the Netherlands for Spain in 1576 and secured passage to India in 1583 as secretary to Dominican Vicente da Fonseca, the newly-appointed Portuguese Archbishop of Goa, which gave him access to secret information, including the East Indies portolan charts guarded for over a century. With an impressive disregard for the trust placed in him, Linschoten began to copy these
maps meticulously. On his return to the Netherlands, he wrote an account of his travels in 1595 with prints based on his own drawings and maps incorporating the information stolen from the Portuguese.
The first book is especially valuable for its eyewitness account of India, as one of the few Renaissance works on the East to be illustrated from life. Linschoten’s description of Goa is “one of the most original and reliable narratives prepared during the sixteenth century on life at the hub of Portugal’s Eastern empire and still is regarded as one of the best sources for Goa’s history at the peak of its glory”. The maps in the first book of the ‘Itinerario’ were engraved by Henricus van Langren, mainly using Portuguese maps owned by Cornelis Claesz, the original publisher of the ‘Itinerario’. They were mostly drawn by de Lasso, and originally acquired by the Houtman brothers between 1592-93, during their secret mission to Portugal at the suggestion of Petrus Plancius, the first official hydrographer of the VOC.
The engravers
The maps in the first book of the ‘Itinerario’ were engraved by Arnold and Henrik Floris van Langren, mainly using Portuguese maps owned by Cornelis Claesz, the original publisher of the ‘Itinerario’. They were mostly drawn by Bartolomeo de Lasso, cosmographer to the King of Spain, and originally acquired by the Houtman brothers between 1592-1593, during their secret mission to Portugal at the suggestion of Petrus Plancius, the first official hydrographer of the VOC.
TEIXEIRA, Luis
Magna Orbis Terrarum Nova universalis et accurata tabula Geographica ac Hydrographica deli nata in hauc ajcrem formam manu celeberrimi regiae Majesatis cosmographi Ludovici Texeirae.
Dedication: Serenissimae Isabellae Clarae Eugeniae Hispan. Infanti. Belg. Principi, Sereniss. Alberti Archid Austriae Ducis Burgindiae Brae. &c. Coniugi Charissime. Joannes Baptista Vrints Antwerpia nus, hanc Ludovici Tesseirae Cosmographi Hispaniarum Regum Longi Peritissimi Mappam Generalem D.D. Anno a Christo Nato 1604.
Publication Antwerpiae, apud Joannem Baptistam Vrient, 1604.
Description Engraved map, printed on twelve sheets, flanked by four sheet letterpress description annotated with several woodcut animals, with fine contemporary hand-colour heightened gold, trimmed to neat lines, laid on linen, extensive areas of restoration. A full conservation report is available on request.
Dimensions 1670 by 2970mm. (65.75 by 117 inches).
References Schilder, Günter, ‘Monumenta Cartographica Neerlandica’, III, pp. 1-102; ibid. pp. 3951, No. 5 and No. 6; Shirley, Rodney, ‘The Mapping of the World’, No. 183 (Plancius 1592), No. 243 (van den Ende/BNF), No. 248 (Teixeira); Destombes, Marcel, ‘La Mappemonde de Petrus Plancius gravée par Josua van den Ende 1604’, Hanoi, IDEO, 1944, Publications de la Societé de Géographie de Hanoi; Destombes, Marcel, ‘Quelques rares Cartes nautiques Néerlandaises du XVII Siècle’, in: Imago Mundi 30, 1978, pp. 56-70. Woodward, David (ed.), ‘History of Cartography’, vol. 3, part 2, pp. 1347-1351.
856,000 AUD
The Great Southern Continent
A spectacular wall map of astonishing beauty made at the beginning of the Dutch Golden Age.
Cartography
The present map draws on the cartography of Luis Teixeira (fl 1564-1613), whose name appears in the large pasted title - a Portuguese cartographer from a famous mapmaking dynasty. He worked in Lisbon and the Portuguese colonies, but was also a friend of and collaborator with Dutch cartographers, contributing a map of Japan to Abraham Ortelius’s atlas. Ortelius and Cornelis Claesz published five of his maps between them, and all were specifically advertised as based on his work, indicating that he was highly respected in Amsterdam.
The map is based upon a simple cylindrical projection and follows very closely the 1592 wall map drawn by Petrus Plancius, “a milestone in the emergence of Dutch cartography [and] the first large wall map of the world to be published in the north” (Schilder). The work was engraved by Baptista and Jan van Doetecum and is known only in a single extant example: that in the Colegio del Corpus Cristi in Valencia, Spain. Plancius drew heavily on Mercator’s 1569 world map, as well as contemporary manuscript maps by the Portuguese cartographers Pedro de Lemos and Bartolomeo de Lasso. The present Teixeira map shows a number of significant improvements over Plancius’s prototype: the redrawing of Guiana following Sir Walter Raleigh’s exploration of 1595; the insertion of the Davis Strait, Novaya Zemblya, and the tributaries of the Congo; and amendments to the southern parts of South America and Africa
This updated geographical information was derived from accounts of voyages collected by Linschoten, De Bry, Hulsius, Claesz and others
The map is noteworthy for its portrayal of a vast southern continent, and its depiction of the Southern Pacific at the dawn of Dutch exploration of southeast Asia and Australasia. The true form of the island of New Guinea had not yet been ascertained, and so, bizarrely, it appears twice: once as an island on the left hand side of the map, and again as part of the mythical continent of Magellanica on the right. The Gulf of Carpentaria is tantalizingly hinted at in the sweeping bay in Magellanica at the far right of the map.
The myth of the Great Southern Continent was propagated by the belief that, in order to balance the earth, there must be a landmass in the southern hemisphere of a size commensurate with that in the north. It was, in part, this erroneous assumption that spurred Dutch exploration of Australia in the seventeenth century, and Captain Cook’s voyages over one hundred years later. It was not until the twentieth century, and the explorations of Captain Scott and Roald Amundsen, that the lands of the southern hemisphere were finally charted with any degree of accuracy.
Towards the lower corners of the map are representations of the northern and southern hemispheres, and along the bottom of the map are ten small panels containing detailed maps of Magellan’s Strait (according to Drake in 1579, Noort in 1599, and De Weert, also in 1599); of Rio de la Plata; Northern Europe; Novaya Zemlya (according to Barentsz in 1598), and the straits of Sona (off Java); Anian; Manilla; and Gibraltar. Below the map, printed on separate strips, are long engraved panels presenting the four continents, each personified by a woman riding a symbolic mount. Background scenes show the typical architecture or dwellings of each region, indigenous animals, and the local peoples engaged in battle. These scenes relate to the text panels flanking the map, which are printed in letterpress interspersed with depictions of local flora and fauna. This text is trimmed from the only known institutional example of this map, making the present example, together with a further privately held copy, one of only two known maps surviving in its original form.
Publication.
The existence of an extremely large wall map of the world by Luis Teixeira, sold by Jean Baptiste Vrients and Cornelis Claesz, is recorded by Schilder in ‘Wall Maps of the World published in Amsterdam before 1619’ (MCN, vol. III, p. 39 No. 5), and Shirley in ‘Mapping the World’ (248). Although neither Schilder nor Shirley record any extant examples, the evidence for its production comes from two contemporary sources; first in the archives of the publishing house of Plantin-Moretus:
“On 14 December 1604 the Antwerp publisher and map dealer Joan Baptista Vrients delivered to Balthasar Moretus several maps of the world, among which were the maps of Teixeira: ‘Adi 14e Decembre [1604], 2 Groote Mappa Texerae 6 fl., 2 Cleyn Mappa Texeirae 3 fl. 10’” (Schilder).
And second in a catalogue by Cornelis Claesz:
“A much more detailed description of Teixeira’s world maps is provided by Cornelis Claesz in his catalogue of 1609. As was mentioned in the description of map no. 1 [i.e. Plancius’s world map of 1592], this is not a stock list, but a catalogue comprising only of the engravings and maps that were printed from copper plates owned by Cornelis Claesz. In the section ‘All kinds of large maps’ two maps of the world by Teixeira of different sizes were offered for sale, whilst the customers could choose the language in which he wanted the accompanying description. ‘Mappa Mundi Lodovici Tessairae, 22. large folios in Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, English, Dutch and German” (Schilder).
Although neither of the sources refers to a date of publication, the Spanish writer Leon Pinelo referred in 1629 to two Teixeira maps dated 1598 and 1604 respectively. Whether or not they were two unique maps, or simply different editions of the same work, is unclear.
As well as bearing the names of Teixeira and Vrients, the present map also carries the name of the engraver Joshua van den Ende. Both Shirley (243) and Schilder (MCN III, p.45 No. 6), record a large wall map on twelve sheets engraved by van den Ende, and dated circa 1604. The sole institutional copy referenced by both Shirley and Schilder – in the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris - is undated, untitled, and unsigned by any author or publisher. Only van den Ende’s name, as the engraver, appears on the sheets. After consultation of the BNF map, it is clearly printed from the same plates as the present example. The discovery of the present work therefore allows us to confirm Schilder’s date of 1604, and to add both Vrients as vendor and Teixeira as the work’s cartographer. It also allows us to correct the map’s erroneous attribution to Willem Blaeu. The editors of the ‘History of Cartography’, Destombes (in his monograph on the BNF’s van den Ende map) and Schilder all suggest that Willem Blaeu may have published the map, for three reasons. First, neither Hondius nor Claesz in his 1609 catalogue mention such a map; second, van den Ende is known to have engraved much of Blaeu’s earliest published work; third, in 1604 Claesz and Plancius’ privilege for their 1592 wall map ended, thus allowing Blaeu (or any other publisher) to reproduce the map.
However, with the discovery of the present work, we can conclude that it was in fact Vrients, in association with Claesz, who decided to publish the new map in 1604, updating the hugely successful Plancius map of 1592 with the latest developments from Teixeira.
Rarity
Dutch world wall maps from this era are incredibly rare. Due to the rapid rate of discovery at the beginning of the seventeenth century “many maps soon lost their value; the owners replacing the obsolete maps with new ones. This development is one of the causes of the great percentage of losses which wall maps of the world suffered; they are extremely rare nowadays” (Shirley).
The present work is only the third surviving, and second complete, example of the Teixeira/Vrient map of 1604. The example in the BNF lacks the accompanying text and title. Schilder records five examples prior to the present map in his census of Dutch world wall maps published in Amsterdam before 1619 (MCN III, p. 19-102):
1. PLANCIUS, Petrus. ‘Nova et Exacta Terrarum Orbis Tabula Geographica ac Hydrographica’. Amsterdam, 1592. Map on 19 sheets. One recorded example, Collegio del Corpus Cristi in Valencia.
2. LANGREN, Hendrik van. ‘Nova et Accurata, Totius Orbis Terrarum Geographica et Hydrographica’. [Amsterdam, c.1600]. Map on (?)20 sheets. One recorded example Stadtbibliothek of Breslau, now lost due to military action during World War II.
3. CLAESZ, Cornelis. [No Title] [Amsterdam, Cornelis Claesz., c.1602]. Map on four sheets. No known extant example of the first edition.
4. HONDIUS, Jodocus. ‘Nova et Exacta Totius Orbis Terrarum Descriptio Geographica et Hydrographica’. [Amsterdam, Cornelius Claesz, 1603]. Map on four sheets. No known extant example of the first edition.
5. TEIXEIRA, Luis. [No Title] [Amsterdam, Joan Baptist Vrients, (?) 1604]. Map on nine sheets. No known extant example of the first edition.
As the list shows, the present work is only the second surviving example from the first twelve years of world wall map publication in Amsterdam. In fact, of the seven further maps that Schilder goes on to list as published before 1619, only four are known to exist in their first edition.
BERRY, William
A New Map of the World Projected upon the Poles of the Equator By Will. Berry.
Publication
London, Sold by Will Berry at the Signe of the Globe between Chearing-Cross and White-Hall, [c1680].
Description
Engraved map, fine original hand-colour, Ptolemaic, Tychonic, and Copernican diagrams of the solar system around map, map of the ancient world below.
Dimensions
425 by 480mm (16.75 by 19 inches).
References Not in Shirley; LC G3200 1675.B4.
60,000 AUD
The first polar projection world map published by an Englishman
The first world map on polar projection to be published by an Englishman.
Polar Projection
Polar projection is a type of azimuthal projection based on a plane perpendicular to the Earth’s axis through the poles. On polar-centered azimuthal projections, longitude is represented by radial straight lines, and latitude by concentric circles, or parallels. One of the earliest examples of a polar map of this kind is Mercator’s 1569 world map, on which the Arctic is shown in an inset map on a polar projection, rather than included as part of the main image on the eponymous cartographer’s projection.
Other early double hemisphere world maps on north and south polar projections include Gerard De Jode’s Hemispheriu ab Aequinoctiali Linea, 1593; Isaac Habrecht’s map of 1628; Janssonius’ Typus Orbis Terrarum from the same year; Jean Boisseau’s Nouvelle Description de toute la terre universelle of 1640; and Novus Planiglobe Terrestris Per Utrumque Polum Conspectus, engraved by Joan Blaeu before 1672, the only extant example of which bears the later imprint of Gerard Valck, published around 1695. The present map by Berry is an example of the first map on polar projection to be published by an Englishman.
The Map
Published around 1680, Berry’s map shows both the north and south hemispheres on a polar projection at a scale of approximately 1:100,000,000, with both extending to the equator, which is scaled. The coast of Australia is incomplete and California is shown as an island. Other cartographic myths include the massive single Great Lake and the Straits of Anian. The sizes of the Philippines and Japan are exaggerated, and the southern tip of South America has been truncated due to the projection.
At first glance the work would appear to be a copy of Blaeu/Valck Novus Planiglobe Terrestris Per Utrumque Polum Conspectus; and although Berry’s English title is an almost direct translation of Blaeu’s work, it is no merely slavish copy. Berry has reversed the hemispheres, and significant cartographic differences are evident, especially in the depiction of South America.
Surrounding the hemispheres are cosmological diagrams showing the Ptolemaic, Copernican and Tychonic solar systems, as well as a smaller map of the ancient world. This shows only Europe, Asia and Africa, and is divided into layers of “temperate zone”, “frozen zone”, “unhabitable” and “habitable by the Antients” regions. Ribbons ornament the upper left- and right-hand corners, streaming from the ends of the simple title banner along the upper edge. The map was engraved by John Rich, who also executed his road map of Great Britain the year before.
William Berry (1639-1718)
In his Printed Maps in the Atlases of Great Britain and Ireland, 1579–1870, Thomas Chubb describes Berry as a bookseller, geographer, and engraver, who was active between about 1670 and 1703.
Berry was the son of a Warwickshire baker, probably apprenticed alongside his future partner Robert Morden (c1650-1703) to Joseph Moxon (1627–1691), an engraver, mapmaker, globe-maker and instrument-maker. His most enduring partnership was later with Morden, and together they sold topographical works, prints, maps, charts and globes. Among their shared works were A New Map of the English Plantations in America (1673), William Leybourn’s An introduction to astronomy and geography: being a plain and easie treatise of the globes (1675), and Playing cards depicting the Counties (1676).
In 1677 they petitioned the Attorney General for “a licence to do all general and particular maps of the several parts of the world according to an alphabetical manner and method first projected by them against any other undertakers”. Although there are individual maps and globes prepared by the pair, the larger project never came to fruition, although Berry is best remembered, as the “English Sanson”, for the set of maps of the world that he corrected and amended after Nicolas Sanson, which were issued separately between 1680 and 1689.
Rare we are only able to trace one institutional example, held at The Library of Congress, and a smaller facsimile at the British Library.
CORONELLI, Vincenzo Maria
Asia Divisa nelle sue Parti secondo lo stato presente Descritta, e Dedicata.
Publication Venice, Girolamo Albrizzi, 1691.
Description Engraved map on two sheets, good wide margins.
Dimensions 605 by 920mm. (23.75 by 36.25 inches).
References Clancy Terra Australis map 6.22; Sweet 73; Tooley 351.
11,500 AUD
Coronelli’s Asia showing the discoveries of the Jesuits and the Dutch
Published in Coronelli’s magnificent atlas ‘Atlante Veneto, nel quale si contiene la descrittione... degl’ Imperii, Regni, Provincie, e Stati dell’ Universo’, Venice 1691, but also possibly issued separately earlier.
Coronelli has dedicated his large and decorative map of Asia to the Jesuits, or the Society of Jesus, who first arrived in Asia when Francis Xavier landed in Goa in May of 1542. Over the course of ten years, Xavier travelled across Asia, taking in much of India, as far as Sri Lanka, Malacca, the Molucca Islands, Japan and China. He died of a fever in 1552 on the island of Shang Chuan, while waiting for a boat to take him to mainland China. Thirty years later, Matteo Ricci an Italian Jesuit, began his mission in China, eventually spending twenty-eight years there. The Jesuits were the first, and for many centuries, the only, to bring knowledge of the far east to the attention of Europeans.
This highly decorative and detailed map, shows the results of Dutch discoveries in Australia, and Tasman’s in particular. Maarten de Vries’ exploration is shown in the shape of the north of Japan.
Vincenzo Coronelli (1650-1718) was an Italian cartographer and globe maker. He was apprenticed to a woodcut printer at ten years old, but then entered the Franciscan Order as a novice at thirteen.
In 1701, he was made Father General of the Order, but was removed from office by the Pope three years later after complaints from fellow clerics. Coronelli mainly lived and worked in Venice, but an opportunity arose to make his name when an early commission for two globes for the Duke of Parma brought him to the attention of the Cardinal d’Estrées, who summoned him to Paris to create two huge globes for Louis XIV. They each had a diameter of fifteen feet, and were built with trapdoors so they could be worked on from the inside. He was made royal cartographer to Louis XIV in 1681 as a result, and worked in Paris for two years. He collaborated with Jean Baptiste Nolin, who went on to become the French publisher for all of Coronell’s work. On his return to Venice, Coronelli was made cosmographer to the Republic, and granted a stipend of 400 florins a year.
He printed globe gores in the ‘Libri dei Globii’ as well as producing pocket globes, and his large globe over a metre in diameter was owned by royalty across Europe. He issued the ‘Atlante Veneto’ in 1691, which was intended to be an extension of Blaeu’s atlas in three parts, covering hydrography and ancient and modern geography. One of the volumes was an isolario. Coronelli was known as a careful scholar, and his work across Europe gave him access to the latest information. For example, he produced the first widely published European map of settlements in New Mexico, ‘America Settentrionale’ (1688), after being given the information by a former governor of New Mexico, Diego de Peñalosa.
Coronelli also founded the world’s oldest surviving geographical society, the Accademia degli Argonauti, who produced a printed version
of the Paris globes. They were named for Jason and the Argonauts, the adventurers who set out to find the golden fleece; their symbol was the globe surmounted by a ship in full sail. A list published in the ‘Epitome cosmografica’ in 1693 reveals that the society counted princes, ambassadors and cardinals amongst its members. They were to receive a minimum of six copper engravings a month, creating a a guaranteed market for his productions. Before his death, he had managed to produce six volumes of what he hoped would be a comprehensive encyclopedia, the ‘Biblioteca universale sacro-profana’.
FEUILLE, Jacob de la
Indiae Orientalis nec non Insularum Adiacentium Nova Descriptio Auctore Jac.o de la Feuille. Cum Privilegio Ordinum Hollandiae et West-frisiae.
Publication [Amsterdam, c1696].
Description Engraved map with contemporary handcolour in full.
Dimensions 550 by 635mm (21.75 by 25 inches).
References Tooley I 566 (Feuille), II 35 (de Wit).
5,700 AUD
One of only three examples known
Rare printing by Jacob de la Feuille (1668-1719), son of Daniel de la Feuille, of Nicolas Visscher’s 1670 map of Southeast Asia. The map extends to include India, Ceylon, the Maldives, part of China, the East Indies, the Philippines, southern Persia, and the northern coast of Australia, depicted as “Hollandia Nova”.
Jacob de Feuille acquired a number of engraved cartographical plates through his marriage in 1696 to Maria de Ram, the widow of Johannes de Ram (1648-93), and this map is clearly printed from the same plate as de Ram’s map of the same title, c1683, with Feuille’s name substituted for de Ram’s. It is also almost identical to De Wit’s 1688 map of the same title. In his imprint, de Wit describes the map as “Editia” (edited) by him, whereas both de Ram and Feuille, in their imprints, attest that the map is “Auctore” (authored) by them, implying that the de Ram / Feuille map precedes de Wit’s. De Wit’s ‘Tabula Indiae Orientalis, emendata’ of the same area was published in 1662.
However, Jacob de la Feuille’s honour cannot be depended upon. The year following his marriage, “he was already in trouble for he was brought to court accused of having raped his housemaid. A notary act of 1711 registers the complaint of his wife that he left her five years earlier in a poor state and that his present whereabouts were unknown” (Burden 577).
Exceptionally rare: only known in two other examples: bound in a Frederick De Wit composite atlas at the Newberry Library; and in the National Library of Australia.
HONDIUS, Henricus
India quae Orientalis dicitur, et Insulae Adiacentes
Publication
Amsterdam, Apud G. Valk. et P. Schenk, [1696].
Description Engraved map with contemporary handcolour in full.
Dimensions 430 by 530mm (17 by 20.75 inches).
References Koeman, Sche 1; Tooley 725.
2,000 AUD
A comprehensive northern coastline of Australia
A comprehensive map of Southeast Asia, extending from Persia to Japan, and south to a well-developed northern Australian coastline, from “t’Landt van d’Endracht” in the west to Carpentaria in the east, based on the discoveries of Abel Tasman. It was first published, with an abbreviated northern coastline of Australia, by Henricus Hondius in 1633. Valk and Schenk included their updated version, as here, in their ‘Atlas contractus sive mapparum geographicarum...’ (c1696).
Johannes Janssonius (1588-1664), was the son of a printer, publisher and bookseller from Arnhem with the same name. In 1612, he married Elizabeth Hondius, daughter of Jodocus Hondius I, and in the same year set up his own publishing house in Amsterdam. When Jodocus I died that same year he began helping Hondius’s widow and two sons (Collette, Jodocus II and Henricus) with the continued publication of the Mercator - Hondius atlas. Unfortunately, in 1621 the Hondius brothers fell out, setting up rival firms. Henricus continued his father’s business with his brother-in-law, Janssonius. By 1629, the Blaeu family were becoming serious rivals to their publishing partnership, so they “set about revising the Mercator-Hondius atlas which... had continued unchanged for nearly thirty-five years” (Shirley 336). Janssonius died in 1664, and his heirs continued the business until 1676, when the atlas inventory was sold to Abraham Wolfgang along with some of the copperplates which were later sold on to Schenk and Valk, who, in this case, have updated the cartography and added their own imprint.
SCHENK, Petrus
Nova totius Asiae tabula.
Publication
Amsterdam, Petrus Schenk Excudit. Met Previlegie P. Tideman deliavit G V Gouwen fecit, [c1710].
Description
Engraved wall map on nine joined sheets, with contemporary hand-colour in outline.
Dimensions 840 by 970mm (33 by 38.25 inches).
References
Hall, ‘Dictionary of Subjects & Symbols of art’, 1991; Schilder,’ Monumenta Cartographica Neerlandica’, 1990, Vol. III, p. 168; Shirley, ’The mapping of the world’, 1983; Wieder, ‘Monumenta Cartographica’, Vol. III.
285,000 AUD
The only known example of Peter Schenk’s wall map of Asia
A magnificent wall map of all Asia, extending from the Mediterranean and Arabia in the west to the Pacific and Australia in the east. The title appears in a separate decorative banner along the top; five vignettes of city views are attached along the bottom. An inset double-hemisphere map of the world surrounded by an elaborate allegorical cartouche, based on Joan Blaeu’s world map of 1648 (see Schilder, Shirley 371, and Wieder vol. 3) appears lower left. Schenk’s map of Asia derives from Jan Mathysz’s set of the continents published c1655 (see British Library), which were also based on Joan Blaeu’s world map of 1648 (Shirley 371): one of the significant differences being that on the main map Korea appears as peninsula, whereas in the vignette it is an island. The town views are also derived from Mathysz: Goa, a former Portuguese port on the west coast of India; Suratte, the first trading post of the British in India, from 1608, and a point of departure of pilgrims to Mecca; Batavia, present-day Jakarta, on the island of Java, and a significant port for the Dutch in the East Indies; Columbo or Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka; and Jerusalem. Petrus Schenk (1660 - c1718) was “active as an engraver and publisher from the 1680s. His name appears on the title-page of Robyn’s ‘Zee-Atlas’ of 1683 and three years later a joint privilege was granted to him and his partner Gerard Valck. Koeman refers to a later privilege granted in 1695 to copy Sanson’s maps, including a world map which Schenk was ready to print by 1696 or 1697” (Shirley). He was born in Germany but settled in Amsterdam in the ‘Globe Kaart en Konstwinkel’ on the ‘Vijgendam’, where he became a pupil of the engraver Gerard Valck (1651-1726). In 1687 he married Valck’s sister Agatha. In 1694, Schenk and Valck acquired the plates for Johannes Janssonius’s ‘Atlas Novus’, which they reissued under their joint imprint. Schenk had three sons who all became engravers. The eldest son, Peter Schenk the Younger, also a cartographer, continued his father’s business in Liepzig. Younger sons, Jan and Leonard, remained in Amsterdam where they maintained the workshop established by their father. His daughter, Maria, married Leonard Valck, the son of Gerard, who continued his father’s workshop. Philips Tideman (or Tiedeman) (1657-1708) was born in Hamburg, but settled in Amsterdam as a designer. He was a pupil of Gerard de Lairesse and worked for Nicolaas Visscher II and Carel Allard. Gilliam van der Gouwen was a Dutch engraver from Amsterdam and a pupil of Pieter Picart. Between 1681 and 1713 he worked for Allard, Visscher, De Wit and Halma.
Rarity
The only known example.
One of the most important scientific maps ever published
HALLEY, Edmond
A New and Correct Sea Chart of the Whole World shewing the Variations of the Compass as they were found in the year [gap] … [second title:] Nova & Accuratissima Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula Nautica Variationum Magneticarum Index Juxta Observationes Anno. 1700 habitas Constructa per Edm. Halley.
Publication London, Mount & Page, [c1722].
Description Engraving on two sheets and one half sheet.
Dimensions 518 by 1436mm (20.5 by 56.5 inches).
60,000 AUD
Halley’s sea chart of the world is one of the most important scientific maps ever published, the application of a brilliant scientific mind to one of the basic problems of navigation, and producing the first published world magnetic chart. Various dates have been given for its first publication, but an announcement in the Post Man (issue 1354) for 7th - 9th December 1704 gives some indication of its first appearance.
This chart is printed from a set of replacement plates copied from the original set. The title bears the imprint of Richard Mount and Thomas Page, appropriate for the period 1700 to 1722 (the year of Richard Mount’s death) but the omission of the ten line panegyric to Queen Anne (d1714) and dedication to Prince George of Denmark (d. 1708), her husband, points to a publication date post-1714. The positions of these two features are left blank (central Africa and central Asia). Furthermore, an exemplar printed from the first set of plates is dateable to [ca. 1718], which narrow the window still more.
The general appearance of the plates points to this printing being a preliminary proof before the insertion of the lines of the variation of the compass (the main purpose of the chart) and with a blank space in
the English title where the date could be inserted. The absence of engraving where the original panegyric and dedication were located also suggests that these areas were yet to be completed.
The likelihood is that the first set of plates were damaged; the [c1718] printing referred to above shows evidence of plate cracking; perhaps these second plates were commissioned as replacements but, for whatever reason were not completed at the time, perhaps because of the death of Richard Mount or (slightly later) Mount and Page’s publication of Thomas Haselden’s world chart, on a more convenient format, gave them a more suitable map for their purposes.
As sometimes found on the second state, this example has the additional half-sheet, covering Australia and the Pacific, correctly pasted-on at right but, additionally, also added along the left-hand border.
This is the only recorded example of this early (presumed proof) printing of the second plates.
From the Library of the Earls of Macclesfield, though not offered as part of the Sotheby’s sales.
[after ROBERT DE VAUGONDY, Gilles and Didier]
Amerique partie Septrenionale [and] Amerique partie Meridionale.
Publication
A Paris, chez Petit, rue du petit Pont a l’image Notre-Dame, [1767].
Description
A pair of handheld fire screens, engraved map with with original hand-colour, French text to verso, with wooden handle.
Dimensions (greatest dimensions) 280 by 250mm (11 by 9.75 inches).
11,500 AUD
“...n’a ete découverte que depuis 276 ans”
Rare handheld fire screen with a map of North America.
Face screens were used to shield the face from heat from a fire or stove, this had a dual purpose to it, one being preventing a red flush to the skin which would be considered unbecoming, the second was to prevent the thick white makeup used by ladies in the eighteenth century, of melting.
The presents screen also doubles as an educational tool, with the verso depicting a map of North America, and the recto a brief history of the continent. Although the screen is not dated the text mentions America being discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1491, some 276 years ago, giving us a date of 1767.
The map is based on the work of Gilles and Didier Robert de Vaugondy (fl.1730-1780), one of the leading Parisian mapmakers of the eighteenth century, who published a very similar map of North America in their hand-held ‘Atlas Portatif’ of 1748.
Little is known about the publisher Petit (fl.1755-1784), whose premises was on the ‘rue petit Pont, although the holdings of several museums suggest that he specialised in the production of handheld fire screens; with screens displaying scenes from contemporary plays, as well as more educational fare.
Due to the screens ephemeral nature, eighteenth century examples in such fine condition are particularly rare.
[after ROBERT DE VAUGONDY, Gilles and Didier]
L’Asie.
Publication
A Paris, chez Petit, rue du petit Pont a l’image Notre-Dame, [1767].
Description
Handheld fire screen, engraved map with with original hand-colour, French text to verso, with wooden handle.
Dimensions (greatest dimensions) 280 by 250mm (11 by 9.75 inches).
4,800 AUD
Asia on a fire screen
Rare handheld fire screen with a map of Asia.
Face screens were used to shield the face from heat from a fire or stove, this had a dual purpose to it, one being preventing a red flush to the skin which would be considered unbecoming, the second was to prevent the thick white makeup used by ladies in the eighteenth century, of melting.
The presents screen also doubles as an educational tool, with the verso depicting a map of Asia, and the recto a brief history of the continent. Although the screen is not dated, the text to a similar screen depicting North America mentions, America being discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1491, some 276 years ago, giving us a date of 1767.
The map is based on the work of Gilles and Didier Robert de Vaugondy (fl.1730-1780), one of the leading Parisian mapmakers of the eighteenth century, who published a very similar map of Asia in their hand-held ‘Atlas Portatif’ of 1748.
Little is known about the publisher Petit (fl.1755-1784), whose premises was on the ‘rue petit Pont, although the holdings of several museums suggest that he specialised in the production of handheld fire screens; with screens displaying scenes from contemporary plays, as well as more educational fare.
Due to the screens ephemeral nature, eighteenth century examples in such fine condition are particularly rare.
[after ROBERT DE VAUGONDY, Gilles and Didier]
L’Afrique.
Publication
A Paris, chez Petit, rue du petit Pont a l’image Notre-Dame, [1767].
Description
Handheld fire screen, engraved map with with original hand-colour, French text to verso, with wooden handle.
Dimensions (greatest dimensions) 280 by 250mm (11 by 9.75 inches).
4,800 AUD
Africa on a fire screen
Rare handheld fire screen with a map of Africa.
Face screens were used to shield the face from heat from a fire or stove, this had a dual purpose to it, one being preventing a red flush to the skin which would be considered unbecoming, the second was to prevent the thick white makeup used by ladies in the eighteenth century, of melting.
The presents screen also doubles as an educational tool, with the verso depicting a map of Asia, and the recto a brief history of the continent. Although the screen is not dated, the text to a similar screen depicting North America mentions, America being discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1491, some 276 years ago, giving us a date of 1767.
The map is based on the work of Gilles and Didier Robert de Vaugondy (fl.1730-1780), one of the leading Parisian mapmakers of the eighteenth century, who published a very similar map of Africa in their hand-held ‘Atlas Portatif’ of 1748.
Little is known about the publisher Petit (fl.1755-1784), whose premises was on the ‘rue petit Pont, although the holdings of several museums suggest that he specialised in the production of handheld fire screens; with screens displaying scenes from contemporary plays, as well as more educational fare.
Due to the screens ephemeral nature, eighteenth century examples in such fine condition are particularly rare.
[ARROWSMITH, Aaron]
[Map of the World on a Globular Projection Exhibiting particularly the nautical researches of Captain James Cook, F.R.S. with all the recent discoveries to the present time, carefully drawn by A. Arrowsmith, Hydrographer to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales].
Publication [London, A. Arrowsmith, 10 Soho Square, 1808].
Description
Engraved map, with fine original handcolour in outline, on four sheets, joined in two parts, dissected and mounted on linen, some off-setting, housed in original green marbled paper slipcase, rubbed and scuffed, with bookseller’s label pasted to upper cover.
Dimensions 970 by 1930mm. (38.25 by 76 inches).
23,000 AUD
Arrowsmith’s fine twin-hemisphere map detailing Cook’s voyages
Arrowsmith’s iconic world map on a twin-hemisphere, or globular, projection, charting the routes of Captain Cook’s three voyages.
First published in 1794, the map is on the same scale (five equatorial degrees to one inch) as Arrowsmith’s 1790 ‘Chart of the World on Mercator’s Projection’. The two maps were intended, as he states, to complement one another, exhibiting “the contrast between the two best projections upon which general maps of the world can be constructed”.
The map is typical of Arrowsmith’s work. With myth, misconception, and guesswork stripped away, the style is sparse and elegant, prioritizing cutting-edge geographical detail over decorative flourish. All three voyages made by Captain Cook are plotted (1768-1771, 1772-1775, and 1776-1779).
Visible, too, are the routes of other explorers, including that taken in 1773 by Captain Constantine John Phipps, later Baron Mulgrave, towards the North Pole.
The present example appears without the title and dedication, which, as these were printed on separate sheets, is not unusual for this map. The following features can, however, date it to 1808: the appearance of “Bass’s Strait”, separating Australia from Tasmania; the increased detail on the “Stony Mountains” (that is, the Rockies); the removal of “Doegg Nation” and the lake that sits to its right from western North America; and the lack of detail in the southern coastline of Australia.
Aaron Arrowsmith (1750-1823) was the finest cartographer of his generation. Although he received little formal education, it is believed that he was taught some mathematical instruction by William Emerson, an author of several books on the application of mathematics to the area of cartography. Around 1770, Arrowsmith moved to London to seek employment. He seems to have worked for William Faden before joining John Cary Sr. in the early 1780s. There, he provided the measurements for John Cary’s early publication detailing the roads from London to Falmouth, his first signed work. Arrowsmith set up on his own in 1790 and over the next 30 years produced some of the most beautiful and elegant maps of the era.
The label pasted to the upper cover of the slipcase names the bookseller as “Wm. Allen (32) Dame Strt”. This is likely to be William Allen, the leading Dublin printseller of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, who traded from 32 Dame Street from 1786, until his death in 1825.
Unrecorded
WEST, William
A New and Correct Map of the World with the latest Discoveries of Captn. Cook and other Circumnavigators; Also Geographical and Astronomical Observations of the, Earth, Moon, Stars, &c.
Publication London, 4 Dean Street, Fetter Lane, April 1st, 1816.
Description
Large engraved map of the world, on two sheets joined with fine original outline hand colour, a few minor tears to margins, skilfully repaired.
Dimensions (map) 563 by 1160mm (22.25 by 45.75 inches); (sheet) 728 by 1160mm (28.5 by 44 inches).
References BL, Wall in the Map Reading Room; Armitage and Baynton-Williams: Map 24.
9,500 AUD
Unrecorded state of William West’s two sheet world map.
The present map is the last in the line of two sheet world maps, published in England between 1680 and the beginning of the nineteenth century. The first two sheet world map was published by William Berry in 1680, copying the design of the French cartographer Alexis-Hubert Jaillot. The map was aimed at the mass middle market: larger than the folio sheet maps that appeared in the atlases of the eighteenth century, the map was intended as wall or screen decoration, and was considerably cheaper than the multi-sheet world maps published at the time.
In their comprehensive carto-bibliography of two sheet English world maps, Armitage and Bayton-Williams, divide the maps into four different proto-types after the mapmakers: Berry, Moll, Senex, and Price. The present map is codified as “Senex Subtype G”; the category is distinguished by “‘Tab’ labels, containing titles, attached to each hemisphere”. This form of the map was first introduced by John Evans in 1794. William West received training from John’s brother James Evans in the 1780, and he would late, with the help of Thomas’s son James, take over the business when Thomas retired. West for the rest of his career was know as a publisher of children’s educational material, and only known to have published two maps, the present world map, and a map of England and Wales. Both of which are exceedingly rare.
The map bears a great similarity with Evans’ work. The geographical features are relatively up-to-date apart from the depiction of Tasmania as contiguous with the Australian mainland, and does not show the discoveries made when Matthew Flinders and George Bass sailed through the Bass Strait in 1798-1799. To the east of Papua New Guinea is a landmass named “Terra de Arsacides”, which also appears on d’Anville’s 1761 map, possibly named after Arsacides, the successors of the first King of the Parthians, Arsaces. Curiously although the death of Cook is recorded on Hawaii, only his Second voyage is marked. Two lines of text to the upper Pacific, erroneously dates the track of Cook’s Third voayage: “Cook’s return in 1772”, and “Cook’s track to America 1773”; possibly realising his error neither track has been engraved. Surrounding the map is a model of the solar system, the light of the sun on the moon, and the earth; the faces of the Moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Saturn, and Jupiter; the Sun through a telescope; and text retailing to the fixed stars, comets, the earth, and Saturn’s rings.
The only other recorded example of the map, housed in the British Library, is dated 1803. The date of 1816 on the present example is somewhat problematic, as it is believed that West emigrated to Ireland sometime in the early nineteenth century, and did not return to London until the 1830s.
STIRLING, Captain James; and Thomas PEEL
Chart of the Swan River from a Survey by Capt.n James Stirling R.N. 1827.
Publication London, House of Commons, 13 May 1829.
Description
Large folding panoramic lithographed chart (280 by 630mm to the neatline) with contemporary hand-colour in full, bound into parliamentary “Hansard” paper, number 238, ‘Swan River Settlement... Copies of the Correspondence of the Colonial Department with Certain Gentlemen proposing to form a Settlement in the Neighbourhood of Swan River, in Western Australia’; folio, original blue printed paper wrappers, stabbed and sewn as issued.
Dimensions 350 by 220mm (13.75 by 8.75 inches).
References Crowley, and Hasluck ‘Australian Dictionary of Biography’, online; Ferguson 126.5.
23,000 AUD
“The capabilities of this most important possession to the British interest are too numerous for the undersigned here to set forth” (Peel)
One of the first published charts of the first detailed survey of what would be the Swan River Colony, now Perth in Western Australia, extending as far as Cape Naturaliste in the south, and to about 200 miles north of Rottnest Island. Only preceded by the very rare chart published by Joseph Cross in January of 1829, and a ‘Sketch of the New Settlement of Swan River’, published in the ‘Quarterly Review’ of April 1829, each based on the same survey. The beautiful map is annotated with useful information regarding topography and vegetation, and colour-coded: green areas highlight land intended for settlers and “public purposes”; yellow areas have been granted to Peel, “on condition of his landing 400 Persons before the 1st of November, 1829”; and red, about 90,000 acres at Geographe Bay, to Stirling himself. The map extends as far inland as “General Darlings’s Range”.
Fearful of French colonization in the Pacific, in April of 1826, James Stirling (1791-1865) was given command of the new HMS ‘Success’ with instructions to take a supply of currency to Sydney and then to move the misplaced and unsuccessful garrison at Melville Island. Once at Sydney, Stirling was soon persuaded by Governor, Sir Ralph Darling, to sail west instead and examine the coast with the idea in mind of establishing a defensive garrison or other settlement that might open trade with the East Indies. Stirling “sailed in 1827 and during a fortnight’s visit was much impressed with the land in the vicinity of the Swan River. So also, was the New South Wales government botanist, Charles Frazer, whose report added weight to Stirling’s political and commercial arguments in favour of its immediate acquisition and Stirling’s appointment to establish a new colony there… under the direct control of the British government, and superintended initially by Stirling: a bill would soon be brought before parliament to provide for its government; private capitalists and syndicates would be allotted land in the proposed settlement according to the amount of capital and the money they spent on fares and equipment; priority of choice would be given only to those who arrived before the end of 1830, and no syndicate or company would be the exclusive patron and proprietor of the settlement.
On 2 May 1829 Captain C. H. Fremantle of the ‘Challenger’ took possession, at the mouth of the Swan River, of the whole of Australia which was not then included within the boundaries of New South Wales. Stirling, who arrived later with his family and civil officials in the storeship Parmelia, proclaimed the foundation of the colony on 18 June” (Crowley).
The accompanying report consists of twelve articles of correspondence, mostly to and from Thomas Peel (1793-1865), concerning his proposals to help settle the new colony: “In 1828 Peel went to London and was planning to emigrate to New South Wales, when reports of the new free colony to be founded at Swan River changed his mind. He joined a syndicate of financiers in proposing to the government a plan whereby they would transfer ten thousand settlers with requisite stock and stores
to the new colony within four years, and place them each on 200 acres of land, in return for which the syndicate wished to receive four million acres of land. The Colonial Office, however, was under pressure from Captain (Sir) James Stirling, who had explored the Swan River in 1827, either to grant him the right to develop the place under a proprietary charter, or to proclaim it a new crown colony of which he would be the governor. When Sir George Murray took charge at the Colonial Office in May 1828 he did not wish to grant a charter, or to incur the expense of forming a colony. The interest of Thomas Peel’s association of investors seems to have been a deciding factor in persuading the government that the place could be a crown colony and at the same time be largely developed by outside capital. The government, however, felt it could not agree to the amount of territory the investors wished to receive, and could sanction only a grant of one million acres. At this, all the financiers interested withdrew, except Thomas Peel. While he hesitated, Solomon Levey proposed a ten-year partnership with him in the venture, to which he agreed. A deed of co-partnership was drawn up between them, a long and complicated document by which Levey was to finance the scheme and Peel, not being as wealthy as was thought, was to be the salaried manager of it in the colony, although he was to apply for the title deeds to the land in his own name, it being understood that these lands, with the exception of 25,000 acres, were in joint ownership” (Hasluck).
CROSS, Joseph
Chart of Part of New South Wales, with Plans of the Harbours. Respectfully dedicated to Major Mitchell, Surveyor General of New South Wales by his most Obedt. Servant J. Cross.
Publication London, Engraved and published by Cross, 18 Holborn (opposite Furnivals Inn), 18th March, 1834.
Description
Engraved map with contemporary handcolour in outline, dissected and mounted on linen, original green cloth slipcase with publisher’s label.
Dimensions 940 by 610mm (37 by 24 inches).
References James Bonwick, ‘Discovery and Settlement of Port Phillip: Being a History of the Country Now Called Victoria, Up to the Arrival of Mr. Superintendent Latrobe’ (Melbourne: George Robertson, 1856), 21-23; Thomas Henry Braim, ‘A History of New South Wales from its Settlement to the Close of the Year 1844’, vol.2, (London: Richard Bentley, 1846), 56; William Hilton Hovell, ‘Reply to ‘A Brief Statement of Facts, in connection with an Overland Expedition from Lake George to Port Phillip, in 1824’ (Sydney: Thomas Daniel, 1855), 23; H.S., ‘The Discovery of the Murray’, in The Argus (Melbourne), 19 April, 1924, 7; ‘The Late Hamilton Hume, The Explorer’, in ‘The Sydney Morning Herald’, 24 April, 1873.
9,500 AUD
Half a tent is better than none...
A map of the colony of New South Wales. The various inset maps show ports and harbours around the territory: Port Philip and Western Port, Botany Bay, Jervis Bay, Port Hunter, Broken Bay, Port Macquarie, Twofold Bay, Port Stephens, Morton Bay and Brisbane River, Port Jackson, and one larger map of the whole continent.
New South Wales was the site of the first British settlement in Australia. It started life in 1788 as a convict colony, but immigration rocketed in the early nineteenth century after early settlers found that the land was perfect for cultivating meat and wool, and after the British government’s decision in 1831 to sell crown land in the colonies instead of granting it to convicts. By the 1830s the main exports were wool, fish oil, and whale products. Text at the right hand side records that “The Coast of N.S. Wales is the resort of Black Whales, at all periods of the Year, and in the winter season the Spermiceti Whales repair to the N.E. Coast”.
The annotations on the map reflect the gradual progress of the exploration of the Australian interior. The note near Botany Bay records that it is “celebrated for the first landing of Captain Cook and Sir Joseph Banks” in 1770. 60 years later, when this map was published, huge swathes of the interior remained unknown. An inscription on the south coast records the expedition of Alexander Hamilton Hume and William Hovell, who aimed to find new grazing grounds and follow the paths of westward flowing rivers to see where they finished. The Australian Hume and Englishman Hovell were at odds with each other from the beginning, racing each other to each new landmark and quarrelling over who should name them. Their animosity came to a head when they disagreed on which direction to take, resulting in the split of the expedition. While dividing up the supplies, which even included cutting their single tent in two, Hume and Hovell ended up tussling over a frying pan: each left with half (Bonwick). After their return some glorious mudslinging ensued in the Australian press, with Hovell accusing Hume of “paltry vanity” and “morbid egotism” (Hovell).
The Brisbane River, shown in the inset map at the upper edge, had only been discovered nine years before, and named after the Commissioner at the time, Sir Thomas Brisbane. The map also records the lands held by the Australian Agricultural Company, formed in 1824, the largest business of its kind. The shareholders were granted one million acres of land in New South Wales on which to raise sheep and cattle, and were wildly successful. The Company was headed at the time by the polar explorer Sir William Parry.
It is dedicated to Sir Thomas Mitchell, who became SurveyorGeneral of New South Wales in 1828, holding the position until his death. Mitchell’s long career included four expeditions into Australia’s interior to map uncharted territory, which earned him a knighthood in 1838. He was also the last man in Australia to challenge anyone to a
duel. His opponent was Stuart Donaldson, who had refused to retract a public criticism of the expenditure of Mitchell’s government department. Three shots were exchanged without injury (although one went through Donaldson’s hat) and Donaldson went on to become the Premier of New South Wales.
Joseph Cross (died c1865)
Cross appears to have had a keen interest in emigration to the Australian colonies, having published several works related, including: Atkinson’s ‘An Account of the State of Agriculture and Grazing in New South Wales’, 1826; ‘Chart of Van Dieman’s Land’, 1826; ‘Chart of Part of New South Wales…’, 1827 - 1839; Wakefield’s ‘A Letter from Sydney, the Principal Town of Australasia. Edited by Robert Gouger. Together with the Outline of a System of Colonization’, 1829; Busby’s ‘Authentic Information Relating to New South Wales, and New Zealand’, 1832; but most famously, “the earliest work relating to the inland exploration of Western Australia” (Wantrup): ‘Journals of Several Expeditions Made in Western Australia During the Years 1829, 1830, 1831 and 1832: Under the Sanction of the Governor, Sir James Stirling’, 1833.
We have only been able to trace three institutional examples of this edition, in the University of Cambridge Library, the State Library of New South Wales, and the National Library of Australia.
WYLD, James
World on Mercator’s Projection, Shewing the Distribution of Gold.
Publication
London, James Wyld, Geographer to the Queen & H.R.H. Prince Albert. Model of the Earth – Leicester Square, [c1851].
Description
Lithographed pocket map folding into publisher’s green cloth wallet, with circular printed paper label on both covers, uncoloured
Dimensions
340 by 525mm. (13.5 by 20.75 inches).
4,800 AUD
One of five maps issued with Wyld’s very rare ‘Gold Fields of Australia’, also 1851, this is possibly a proof or prototype copy, for issue as a pocket map, with the deposits uncoloured. No other examples of a separate issue for this map are recorded.
The imprint makes reference to Wyld’s famous ‘Great Globe’, or ‘Monster Globe’, constructed to coincide with the Great Exhibition, which had rejected its inclusion on account of its vast size, of more than 60 feet in diameter. It was a popular attraction at Leicester Square between 1851 and 1862. Since it was hollow, and contained a staircase and elevated platforms, the public were able to climb up inside, and feel the interior surface of the earth, complete with mountains and rivers to scale. The front paste-down of the wallet gives a table of distances, and advertises Wyld’s atlases and more manageable 12-inch globes; all of which were available at the attraction at Leicester Square.
James Wyld (1812-1887) was “the most important mapmaker producing maps of London in the year of the Great Exhibition”. Wyld was a highly successful publisher, MP for Bodmin, and an active figure in public life. He promoted the development of the British Library and campaigned for the Public Libraries and Museums Bill, accusing its agricultural opponents of trying to make the poor drink instead of read in order to keep malt consumption high; although he did oppose the introduction of the Ordnance Survey on behalf of private surveyors. Like his father, he was made Geographer to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1836. He built his business on his ability to produce maps quickly in reaction to new discoveries and information: Punch remarked drily that if a country were discovered in the centre of the earth then Wyld would have a new map out “as soon as it is discovered, if not before”.
Rare: no other recorded examples found.
Provenance:
With the contemporary library label of “Milton, Peterborough”.
AP HUW, D. ap G.; Eben FARDD; and George PHILIP
Gwlad yr aur [Country of Gold (trans.)] neu, Gydymaith yr ymfudwr Cymreig i Australia [or, the Companion of the Welsh migrant to Australia (trans.)] : yn cynwys, hanes y cyfandir australaidd, y trefedigaethau prydeinig ynddo, ac ardaloedd yr aur, eu tir, hinsawdd, masnach, cyflogau, deddfau, &c., &c.; yn nghyda lluaws o ffeithiau o ddyddordeb a phwys arbenig i’r ymfudwr gan D. Ap G., Ap Huw... ; Hefyd, Can yr ymfudwr, gan Eben Fardd.
Publication Caernarfon Gwynedd, Argraffwyd, cyhoeddwyd, ac ar werth gan H. Humphreys, 1852.
Description Octavo (180 by 120mm). Folding engraved map (620 by 500mm) with contemporary hand-colour in outline; original pink printed paper wrappers.
References Ferguson 10630; NLA Bib ID: 1038594.
1,900 AUD
Philip’s new map of the Gold Fields of Australia, for the Welsh
With George Philip’s important early map of the Gold Fields of southeastern Australia: ‘Philip’s new map of the gold fields of Australia comprising all the recent discoveries of Mr. Hargraves, Mr. Hunter, Revd. W. Clark & others in the auriferous districts 1852’ (Liverpool, George Philip & Son, 1852).
The first Australian Gold Rush began in May of 1851 when seasoned prospector, in both Australia and California, Edward Hammond Hargraves (1816-1891) found substantial deposits in Bathurst in New South Wales, and claimed a reward from both the Colonies of New South Wales and Victoria. He then ignored pleas for secrecy, and announced his discovery in the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’, named the area as Ophir, and whipped up enthusiasm in the Bathurst district. “By 15 May over 300 diggers were at Ophir and the first Australian gold rush had begun. It would continue on and off for the rest of the nineteenth century, and have a great effect on the population, which increased from 430,000 in 1851 to 1.7 million in 1871.
The southeastern portion of Australia had been named New South Wales by Captain James Cook, after its resemblance to South Wales, and Welsh people were numbered amongst the first settlers there. Wales has a long history of gold panning and mining, stretching back to ancient times.
GREGORY, Augustus Charles; and John ARROWSMITH
Map of part of Australia, Shewing the Route of the North Australian Expedition in 1855 & 1856. Under the Command of A.C. Gregory.
Publication
London, George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode, Printers to the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty. For her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1857 “/8”.
Description
Large folding lithographed map (270 by 630mm to the neatline), with an inset of the ‘Continuation from R[iver] Burdekin to Port Curtis’, bound into ‘Papers relating to an Expedition recently undertaken for the purpose of Exploring the Northern Portion of Australia. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of her Majesty’; folio, stabbed and sewn as issued, preserved in archival buckram-backed portfolio.
Dimensions 330 by 220mm (13 by 8.75 inches).
References
McLaren, 9295 (not noting the folding map); see Wantrup, p. 252; Waterson for ‘Australian Dictionary of Biography’, online.
2,800 AUD
“Decisive of the general character of the Australian interior” (Sturt)
The first complete account of Gregory’s important expedition across 5000 miles of northern Australia: from Gladstone, near Brisbane in Queensland, across the Northern Territory and into Western Australia; then known as Van Diemen’s and Arnheim’s lands. Accompanied by a detailed map of the route, confirming the presence of a vast inland desert at the red centre of Australia. The paper includes a detailed commentary, and speculations on evidence for previous existence of an inland sea, by Captain Charles Sturt, who had explored some of the same “great desert” from the south, in 1845.
Augustus Charles Gregory’s (1819-1905) family was one of the earliest to settle at the Swan River Colony in Western Australia, and he is fondly remembered there for his invention of an apparatus that operated the first revolving light on Rottnest Island. He served an apprenticeship with Surveyor-General John Septimus Roe, and after a series of successful surveying expeditions in northern Western Australia was chosen to lead an imperially funded scientific exploration across the north of Australia. With “eighteen men, including his brother Henry, Ferdinand von Mueller and other scientists he sailed from Moreton Bay in August 1855 and in September reached the estuary of the Victoria River. After initial set-backs Gregory led several forays up the Victoria River and traced Sturt’s Creek
for 300 miles until it disappeared in desert. Turning east the party explored the Elsey, Roper and Macarthur Rivers, crossed and named the Leichhardt and then travelled to Brisbane by way of the Flinders, Burdekin, Fitzroy and Burnett Rivers. In sixteen months, the expedition had journeyed over 2000 miles by sea and 5000 by land. The natural resources discovered did not measure up to expectations, but Gregory was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society and his report later stimulated much pastoral settlement” (Waterson).
Provenance: British Foreign Office Library.
STUART, John McDouall
Plan of Discovery by John McDouall Stuart shewing his route across and fixing the Centre of the Continent of Australia With alterations and additions to July 7th 1861.
Publication [Adelaide, Government Printer, 1861].
Description
Lithographed map on three large folding numbered sheets (680 by 500mm; 670 by 500mm; 480 x 510mm, to the neatlines); bound into parliamentary “blue paper” “No. 169”: ‘South Australia. Diary of J.M. Stuart’s Explorations, 1860-61. Northern Exploring Expedition,...’, folio, printed on blue paper, stabbed and sewn as issue, preserved in modern buckram-backed archival portfolio.
Dimensions 340 by 210mm (13.5 by 8.25 inches).
References McLaren 15452; Morris, ‘Australian Dictionary of Biography’, online.
7,500 AUD
Fixing the Centre of the Continent of Australia
First publication of Stuart’s monumental map of the vast, sparse, and unforgiving center of Australia is appended to this equally rare report of Stuart’s ultimately unsuccessful fourth and fifth (of six) expeditions attempting to traverse Australia from South Australia to the Gulf of Carpentaria, in a race against Burke and Wills’ expedition from Victoria. The map shows Stuart’s and Gregory’s routes in 1860 and 1861 from Emerald Springs to Newcastle Waters in South Australia, on to James Ranges, Roper River and Blunder Bay in the Northern Territory. They include Gregory’s and Stuart’s camps, streams, waterholes, and notes on vegetation.
Sheet 1: Chambers Creek north to the Waterhouse Range, showing the explorer’s path and comments on the “good” country.
Sheet 2: Showing largely unexplored territory, and noting the confrontation at Attack Creek, where Stuart attacked band of angry Aboriginal men.
Sheet 3: Centred on the Ashburton Range and Newcastle Waters, showing Stuart’s numerous attempts to try to find a way through the dense scrub to the Victoria River. Also, the path of Augustus Gregory’s 1856 expedition along the Roper River, Elsey Creek and across to the Victoria River; and part of Ludwig Leichhardt’s track on the lower Roper River.
In Darwin, in the Northern Territory of Australia, stands a memorial at the northern end of the Stuart Highway, which traverses Australia from Port Augusta in South Australia. The iconic highway is named for Scottish explorer, John McDouall Stuart (1815-1866), who migrated to South Australia in 1815. His first experience of surveying the unforgiving red centre of Australia came in 1844, when he joined Charles Sturt’s expedition. The “seventeen-month journey revealed only desolation” (Morris). Stuart led six attempts to cross the centre of Australia from South to North. The current report prints his journals covering the fourth and fifth expeditions, in which he reached and named the McDonnell Ranges and the Finke River; Stuart also raised a British flag at what he considered to be the centre of Australia. This account is only preceded by an extract published by the ‘South Australian Advertiser’, 1860, and an account of the fourth expedition alone, as House of Assembly paper “65”, issued with only the first two mapsheets.
Fourth expedition.
In March of 1860, Stuart set off again, “with two men and thirteen horses. Most of their provisions were soon spoilt by floods, and when the party reached the freshwater creek that Stuart named after Finke on 4 April, they were suffering from scurvy and he had lost the sight of his right eye. They followed the Finke to the mountains that Stuart named after Governor Sir Richard Macdonnell and headed north again, naming Anna’s Reservoir
after Chambers’ youngest daughter; on 22 April, he camped where he calculated the centre of the continent to be. Two miles away he named Central Mount Sturt (later changed to Stuart) and planted a flag as ‘a sign to the natives that the dawn of liberty, civilization and Christianity was about to break on them’.
For the next month, the party tried in vain to find a route with sufficient water to take them to the north-west. When rain fell late in May they travelled 200 miles north to Tennant’s Creek where they made a depot. Pressing on to Kekwick Ponds Stuart tried to penetrate the near-by scrub but on 26 June was forced back. Two months later the party staggered into Chambers Creek. On his return to Adelaide Stuart was fêted at a public banquet and at Government House; one newspaper urged that he be given the government reward for crossing the continent because Attack Creek, his furthest point, was only 200 miles from explored country in the north” (Morris).
Fifth expedition.
“At the end of 1860 the South Australian government voted £2500 to equip a large expedition to be led by Stuart. Burke and Wills had already set out to cross the continent so there was no time to lose if a South Australian party was to arrive first. On 1 January 1861, he left Chambers Creek with eleven men and reached Attack Creek late in April; with two others, he found a way through the scrub that had defeated him before, to Sturt’s Plain. After exhausting failures to pass the plains, with their provisions low and their clothes in shreds, Stuart gave in and on 12 July turned south to reach Adelaide on 23 September. He received the 1861 gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society from the governor” (Morris).
During his sixth expedition, between October and December of 1862, Stuart was finally successful in reaching the waters of the Indian Ocean. However, his reputation as a heavy drinker led many detractors to doubt that he reached the coast, though the tree he had marked with “JMDS” was positively identified in 1883 and photographed in 1885.
“White-haired, exhausted and nearly blind”, Stuart decided to visit his sister in Scotland and sailed in April 1864. He later went to London, where he died in 1866, after publishing his ‘Journals’, in 1864.
Rare: the complete map, in three parts, is only held at the State Library of South Australia
Provenance:
British Foreign Office Library stamp, lower left first page.
MCKINLAY, John; BURKE, Robert O’Hara; and William John WILLS
Map of the Eastern Part of Australia. Showing the Route of Mess.rs Burke and Wills, from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria [and] Map of Mr. McKinlay’s Route, in search of Mess.rs Burke and Wills, in Sept.r and Oct.r, 1861 (Reduced from the Original).
Publication
London, Ordered by the House of Commons, to be printed,... Henry Hansard, printer. 28 March, 1862.
Description
One large folding and one full-page lithographed map, with contemporary hand-colour in outline (502 by 320; 280 by 170mm); bound into “Hansard” paper ‘Australian Exploring Expedition. (Burke and Wills)... Copy of all Despatches from Sir Henry Barkly and the other Colonial Governors on the subject of the Australian Exploring Expedition’, folio; stabbed and sewn as issued, preserved in archival buckram-backed portfolio.
“the glorious race across the continent” (Sir Henry Barkly)
The censorious official report, issued as part of the royal commission, into the disappearance of legendary Australian explorers Burke and Wills: a tragic tale of hubris and mischance of epic proportions emblazoned into the heart of every Australian.
The signal intent of the expedition, commissioned by the state of Victoria’s worthies on a whim, in the spirit of sporting endeavor rather than scientific exploration, was to compete with the ambitions of South Australian explorer John McDouall Stuart, to be the first to traverse the Australian continent from South to North. The choice of local policeman, Robert O’Hara Burke (1821-1861), as totally inexperienced leader, was: “inexplicable if exploration were the real object, but excellent if it were exploit. Burke was a death or glory man and he achieved both” (Fitzpatrick).
Burke and Wills did, technically, achieve their goal, but at a terrible cost: with an expenditure of more than £60,000, the lives of seven explorers, and an unknown number of indigenous people.
Outfitted with “over two dozen [camels], both riding and pack animals, imported complete with cameleers. There were horses and wagons, abundant food for two years and lavish equipment, including 6 tons of firewood, 57 buckets and 45 yards of green gossamer for veils. The party consisted of three officers: Burke, Landells the camel-master, and William John Wills surveyor and meteorologist; two German scientific officers, Ludwig Becker naturalist and Herman Beckler medical officer and botanist; a foreman and nine assistants and the camel-drivers. The expedition left Melbourne on 20 August 1860 and made a stately progress through the settled districts to Swan Hill and Balranald and reached Menindee on the Darling at the beginning of October.
The march to the gulf was made in extraordinarily favourable conditions, after a season of heavy rain. Charles Sturt’s Stony Desert was like a garden, full of lily ponds, and Burke’s expedition, in this also unique, was never short of water and was able to travel in an almost straight line to its objective, without losing time searching for water. Even so it took four months to do the 1500 miles. They walked from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. with only a single day of rest in the whole period, and were half-starving in the fourth month” (Kathleen Fitzpatrick).
The real hero of the hour was John McKinlay, who led the relief mission. Unlike Burke and Wills, he mapped his route and made useful discoveries. His party was the second to cross the continent from south to north and, like Stuart, he never lost any of his men.
Provenance: British Foreign Office Library.
WILLIS, James A.C.
Map of Port Jackson, and City of Sydney, shewing the Adjacent Municipalities. N.S.W. 1867.
Publication
Sydney, James A.C. Willis, 1867.
Description
Folding chromolithrographed map, dissected and laid down on linen in 20 sections, with contemporary hand-colour in outline, folding into publisher’s maroon cloth, gilt, covers (rebacked preserving the original spine).
Dimensions 660 by 550mm (26 by 21.75 inches).
References
Tooley, Printed Maps of New South Wales’, no 148; NLA Map F 109.
15,000 AUD
Sydney’s CBD
Second state, updated, with the addition of Ferry routes, and other details. First published in 1865. Available coloured and uncoloured, in loose sheets, ‘Book Form’ [as here], and also available on rollers and varnished, for the office.
A very detailed map, centred on Sydney’s central business district and extending as far as ten miles in three directions: as far north as Curl Curl Head, as far south as northern Botany Bay, and as far west as Ashfield. Willis, who has compiled the map from his own surveys, and others at the New South Wales Surveyor General’s Office, names all streets, important buildings: Government House, Customs House, Exchange, St. Andrew’s Cathedral, St. Mary’s Cathedral, Fort Phillip, the Land & Surveyor General’s Office, Prince of Wales Theatre, Royal Hotel, N.S.W. Bank, General Post Office, The Markets and the Australian Museum; neighbourhoods and land reserves.
Including ‘Opinions of the Press’ on the front paste-down: “A very useful map… it shows at a glance the entire harbor from the Heads to Hunter’s Hill on the Parramatta River, the whole of Middle Harbour, Lane Cover River, and the bays to the southward as far as Five Dock and Figtree Bay. It also illustrates the position of the city with regard to the port, and the various suburbs so clearly, that by its aid a stranger could readily find his way from one place to another, without enquiry” – Sydney Morning Herald.
Willis (fl 1848-1896), painter, draftsman and surveyor, arrived in Sydney, from Devon, in the late 1840s. By 1848, he was apprenticed to Conrad Martens, then and now, one of the colony’s talented artists. In 1853, he had become a surveyor and draftsman for the Surveyor General’s Office of New South Wales. This is his earliest published map: others being: ‘The County of Bathurst’, 1869; ‘The Harbour of Port Jackson, New South Wales’, c1870; a ‘Map of New South Wales’, 1871; and the ‘Cereal Map of New South Wales’, 1871. He is probably best known for his panoramic view ‘The Harbour of Port Jackson & city of Sydney drawn from nature…’, 1870. He was a founding member of the NSW Academy of Art, and in 1871 was elected one of its directors.
Rare: only four institutional examples of this state are recorded, all in Australian institutions.
Provenance:
1. With the ink stamp of Berkelouw Booksellers, Sydney, on the front paste-down;
2. From the library of Geoffrey Chapman Ingleton (1908-1998), writer, illustrator, and renowned collector of maps and charts of Australia, with his library mark (no. 10392) on verso. Having served in the Royal Australian Navy from 1922-1936, Ingleton worked as a draftsman for the Australian Hydrographic Office, from 1940-1973. His collection was sold at auction in 1991 and 1992.
DENHAM, Henry Mangles, Captain
Port Jackson (Australie). Leve en 1857, sous la Direction du Capitaine H.M. Denham de la Marine Royale Anglaise. Publie au Depot des Cartes et Plans de la Marine Sous le Ministere de Son Excellence M.r le C.te de Chasseloup-Laubat. Senateur d’Etat au Dep.t de la Marine et des Colonies, en 1861… Corrections essentielles en 1869.
Publication Paris, Depot de la Marine et des Colonies, 1869.
Description Large engraved map, on two sheets joined (618 by 907mm to the neatline, full margins showing the plate mark), with contemporary hand colour to the light-houses.
Dimensions 675 by 1005mm (26.5 by 39.5 inches).
References This issue not in Tooley.
13,500 AUD
Sydney
Large scale and detailed chart of Port Jackson, showing the city of Sydney, and all of Sydney Harbour, from about one and a half miles out to sea, as far south as Bondi Beach, as far north as Cabbage Tree Bay, and west to beyond Cockatoo Island, to Parramatta and Ironstone. A coastal view runs along the bottom edge of the map, showing the entrance to the harbor from just beyond the Heads. The directions of the currents, and soundings are given throughout. Published by the Depot de la Marine, based on a British Admiralty survey of 1857, with corrections, probably after Willis’ map of 1867.
The earliest chart, of Sydney Harbour was published in 1791, based on a survey carried out within a few weeks of first European settlement in January of 1788. The survey by Lieutenants John Hunter and William Bradley, which extended from the Harbour entrance to ‘The Flats’, now Homebush Bay, took only 9 days to complete.
The second survey was completed by John Septimus Roe, the assistant surveyor to hydrographer Phillip Parker King from 1818 to 1822. King had been commissioned to survey the Australian coast based on the findings of Mathew Flinders in his circumnavigation. Although King and Roe conducted most of their survey in the western and north-western coast of Australia, they used Sydney as one of his bases. Roe surveyed Sydney Harbour himself, as far west as The Flats and beyond in 1822, but also borrowed from the discoveries of Hunter and Bradley, and also from Freycinet’s survey of 1802.
“With the discovery of gold in the 1850s and the need to protect the gold shipments, the Royal Navy began to take a greater interest in New South Wales and in 1859 established a new Australian Station, a naval command, separate from the East Indies Station, responsible for waters around Australia. It was initially under the command of a Commodore but upgraded in 1884 to be commanded by a Rear Admiral. This greater naval involvement may explain the more detailed hydrographic surveys which began from about this time. The 1857 British Admiralty survey was carried out by Hutchison et al (1859).
Harbour during the Gold Rush
“It was under the direction of a Captain Henry Mangles Denham F.R.S. who had been tasked with surveying parts of the south-west Pacific in HMS Herald. The chart of this survey, engraved in 1859, had the high soundings density one would expect with a modern hydrographic survey and it clearly marks a significant departure from earlier mapping efforts of Sydney Harbour. The area covered was from 1.5 miles seawards of the harbour entrance, west to Five Dock Bay. However, sounding densities were relatively sparse west of Cockatoo Island, where a new dry dock, Fitzroy Dry Dock, was opened in late 1857. A long baseline, 2780 feet long was laid out at Rose Bay, from which a triangulation scheme was set up to cover all the harbour as far west as Cockatoo Island. Check baselines were set up at Manly Beach, north of the harbour entrance, Darling Point and South Head. The survey and initial chart production took approximately two months” (Phil Mulhearn ‘The 18th and 19th Century Charting of Sydney Harbour / Port Jackson, 2014).
WINDSOR, George Andrew; and William SLIGHT
Map of Victoria Constructed and Engraved at the Surveyor General’s Office, Melbourne... G.A. Windsor, Draughtsman, William Slight, Engraver.
Publication Melbourne, Published by authority of the Government. Under the direction of A.J. Skene, MA Surveyor General, The Hon. J. J. Casey, President, Board of Land and Works & Comr. of Lands & Survey, August 15th 1872.
Description
Large lithographed map with contemporary hand-colour in outline, dissected and laid down on linen, folding into green cloth covers, gilt
Dimensions 1310 by 1990mm (51.5 by 78.25 inches).
References NLA MAP RM 1945; Tooley 898.
9,500 AUD
Victoria during the Gold Rush
A detailed map of the state of Victoria. At the time of printing, Victoria was a relatively new colony, established in 1851. The discovery of gold near Ballarat and Bendigo a few months later set off one of the largest gold rushes in history, as settlers poured in to seek their fortunes. The map reflects the colony’s source of population and wealth, showing how settlements cluster around the gold fields.
The map was commissioned and overseen by Alexander Skene and the Hon. J. J. Casey. Alexander Skene was a Scottish surveyor who had a prominent role in land distribution and regulation in Australia. The Hon. J. J. Casey was the Commissioner for Victoria at the time, a colourful figure who went on to become Minister for Justice. A contemporary newspaper reports in 1878 that Casey had complained that someone without a title had preceded him into dinner at the Paris Exposition Universelle, and had told the Prince of Wales himself that Victoria should be given more land.
While his manner may have been distasteful, Casey’s claim was built on a solid foundation. Gold exports from Victoria enabled Britain to clear all foreign debts by the end of the century, and the explosion in population, particularly in Melbourne, meant that it was one of the most successful new colonies. However, the growth in population also initiated demands for agricultural and political reform, policies aided by the accurate surveying and mapping of Victoria, and the ultimate aim of this map.
Rare: known in only a handful of examples: the Beinecke, the NLA, the State Library of NSW, and the State Library of Victoria
GILL, Macdonald
A Map of Australia Portraying Her Agricultural Products & Fisheries.
Macdonald Gill was commissioned by the Empire Marketing Board in the late 1920s to produce a series of promotional posters. The Empire Marketing Board was formed in May 1926 by the Colonial Secretary Leo Amery to promote intra-Empire trade and to persuade consumers to ‘Buy Empire’. It was actually established as a substitute for tariff reform and protectionist legislation and this is why it was eventually abolished in 1933, as a system of Imperial Preference replaced free trade.
Australia’s natural produce is shown off to great effect: the land is peppered with cattle and sheep, together with vast tracks of wheat, orchards of oranges, lemons, peaches, pears and apples. Woodland is also shown with cedar and sandalwood predominating. To the coast are several dairy farms producing both butter and cheese. To the sea the produce includes mullet, oysters, pilchards, and skate. To the left and right of the map is a table detailing the number of people involved in Irish agriculture and fisheries, the area of cultivation, number of vessels, annual catch, crop, and value of produce.
ARTZYBASHEFF, Boris
World Map of the Major Tropical Diseases. A Life Map.
Publication New York, Time, Inc., May 1, 1944.
Description Folding colour printed pictorial map.
Dimensions
360 by 530mm (14.25 by 20.75 inches).
950 AUD
“... some of the most dreaded tropical diseases...”
A gruesome map of the world, published in ‘Life Magazine’, showing the spread of all major tropical diseases, all but one identified by sinister emoji-style tokens. Malaria, the most pervasive of the vectors, covers much of the tropical regions of the world with a blanket of red, a terrifying background to all the others.
A key below the map identifies, and explains, the causes and major symptoms of: Malaria, Yellow Fever, Denque, Typhus, Plague, Cholera, Sleeping Sickness, Tularemia, Rocky Mountain Fever, Japanese River Fever, Relapsing Fever, Helminthic Diseases, Yaws, Leprosy, and Leishmaniasis. Boris Artzybasheff (1899-1965), son of Russian author, M.P. Artsybasev, was born in Kharkov, in the Ukraine. In 1919 he left Russia, and after “a long and often harrowing journey” he settled in New York. He worked initially as an engraver, designing labels for beer and medicine bottles, graduating to more creative work for newspapers, set designs for the Ziegfeld Theater and Michael Fokine’s Russian Ballet, and book illustration.
In 1940 the editors of ‘Fortune’ commissioned Artzybasheff “to design a cover for the magazine. The artist had already created several colorful graphs and charts to illustrate articles in the magazine when he submitted a painting of a Japanese soldier standing before a large sculpted head of the Buddha. This cover art attracted the attention of ‘Time’ magazine editors who were assembling a staff of illustrators to create their cover designs. Before his death in 1965 Artzybasheff created more than 200 covers for ‘Time’ including portraits of Stalin, Hitler, Truman, Mao Tse Tung, and Ho Chi Minh” (Iacono).
However, Artzybasheff’s is best known for his paintings and drawings of mechanized humans. “These pictures, which often border on the surreal, display a keen sense of how the machine works or what human task the machine was meant to replace. The image of animated weapons of war and tyranny that were created for ‘Life’ magazine demonstrate how men can create monsters that are real and deadly” (Domenic J. Iacono, Syracuse University Art Collection online).
The Malayan Emergency
WAR OFFICE
Singapore [and] Penang. Silk printed map with one inset, with map and inset to verso, with numerous visual and written details along lower edge of both images.
Publication [London], War Office, 1957.
Description Double-sided map printed on rayon.
475 AUD
During the mid-eighteenth century, British firms were to be found trading in the Malay Peninsula, and in 1771, the British East India Company charged Captain Francis Light with the responsibility of setting up a trading post there. Light landed in the state of Penang, which was part of the Sultanate of Kedah. At this time, the Sultanate faced a number of internal and external threats, particularly from Siam, and Sultan Abdullah Mahrum Shah therefore offered Penang to Light in return for British protection. The Company, however, commanded Light to take over Penang without promising any assistance to Kedah. Light did indeed take Penang, but failed to mention to the Sultan that the British would not be providing him with any military backing until 1788, upon which the Sultan ordered the British to remove themselves from his territory. A small conflict ensued, in which the British forces razed the fort of Prai, and forced the Sultan to sign an agreement conceding their right to occupy Penang. Consequently, the Union Flag was raised for the first time in Penang on 1st May 1791.
Less than thirty years later, the British reinforced their influence in the Malay Peninsula when Sir Stamford Raffles founded modern Singapore, with the assistance of Major William Farquhar. In 1818, Farquhar had visited Tengku Hussein Shah, the son of the previous Sultan, who was in exile in Penyengat Island while his younger brother lead the Johor-Riau Sultanate. Together they drew up plans for an alliance: the British would acknowledge Tengku Hussein as the legitimate ruler of Singapore if he allowed them to establish a trading post there. Both parties signed a treaty to this effect on 6th February 1819. Hussein soon returned to Singapore, where he was installed as Sultan, but essentially remained a puppet of the British government.
Over the next century, Britain would continue to exert its influence across the Malay Peninsula, but in 1941, the Japanese launched an invasion as part of a coordinated attack that began in Pearl Harbour. Consequently, both Malaya and Singapore were under Japanese control from 1942 to 1945, until Japan’s surrender at the end of the Second World War resulted in their being placed under British Military Administration. Within a year, the British administration was consolidated by the formation of the Malayan Union, from which Singapore was excluded, being considered its own crown colony.
The Union proved deeply unpopular with the local population, and by 1948, it had been replaced by the Federation of Malaya, which achieved independence from British control on 31 August 1957. Six years later, all Malayan states, as well as Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo, formed a larger federation named Malaysia, although Singapore was expelled in 1965.
From the establishment of the Federation in 1948 to the ‘October Resolutions’ of 1960, the British and other Commonwealth forces were
engaged in a prolonged conflict with the Communist independence fighters of the Malayan National Liberation Army. The fighting spanned the colonial period and the creation of an independent Malaya. The form of guerrilla warfare employed by the insurgent Malayan fighters, and the British responses, influenced many similar operations in the future, particularly during the Vietnam War. The conflict was never fought in Singapore, but Commonwealth forces from Australia and New Zealand used it as their base of operations.
The present double-sided map of Singapore and Penang was issued by the British War Office in 1957, when the Federation of Malaya was officially formed, and while the Malayan Emergency was still being fought. The double-sided map is executed in the same style as numerous other conflict maps produced by the War Office during the mid-twentieth century: printed on fabric for durability and easy transportation, they were issued to soldiers and military personnel stationed in the region and contained not only geographical, but also political and military information as well.
The present maps were based on earlier War Office surveys of the region and updated with the political and topographic changes of the recent years. Passage through the treacherous waters of the Malacca Strait is shown with bold red lines. Relief is shown by contours and spot heights, given in metres on the Singapore map, and both metres and feet on the depiction of Penang, while depth is indicated by soundings. Beneath the maps on both sides are legends, an index and glossary, conversion tables and diagrams. On both sides, red lettering reads ‘RESTRICTED’.
[ANONYMOUS after DEMONGENET, François]
[Ivory rosary with celestial and terrestrial globes].
Publication [Italy, c1580s].
Description 11 engraved ivory spheres and one engraved ivory cross, on brass chain.
References
Carol Cofone, The Dragon’s Tail: “Branding” the Boncompagni family (Archivio Digitale Boncompagni Ludovisi, 2018).
Elly Dekker, Globes at Greenwich: a catalogue of the globes and armillary spheres in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (Oxford: Oxford University Press and the National Maritime Museum, 1999).
Mark Häberlein, The Fuggers of Augsburg: Pursing Wealth and Honour in Renaissance Germany (Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 2012).
Augustín Hernando, The Construction of Terrestrial and Celestial Globes in Spain (Globe Studies, 2014).
Hatto Küffner, 500 Jahre Rosenkranz (Köln, 1975).
J. Kügel, Spheres: The Art of the Celestial Mechanic (Kügel, 2002).
Christ Laning, The beads of Bishop Jakob (Paternosters: A Journal about Historical Rosaries, Paternosters and Other Forms of Prayer Beads, Focusing on those in Use before 1600AD, 2007).
Edward Luther Stevenson, Terrestrial and Celestial Globes: Their History and Construction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921).
475,000 AUD
The Boncompagni Rosary Globes
A newly-discovered sixteenth century rosary telling the story of creation and the early ages of man. Only the second known example of such an extraordinary devotional object, the Boncompagni Rosary features two miniature globes. These celestial and terrestrial spheres, bearing many of the hallmarks of contemporary cartography and astronomy, are part of a globe-making tradition that spanned Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Originally commissioned by one of Italy’s leading noble families, the rosary is now offered for the first time in over four centuries.
François Demongenet
François Demongenet was a French physicist and geographer active in Vesoul in eastern France during the mid- and late-sixteenth century. He is best known for a set of terrestrial and celestial globe gores made in 1552. These gores were distributed throughout Europe, particularly through Italian printing houses, and used as a model for numerous miniature globes during the sixteenth century.
It appears that the Demogenet family counted some esteemed figures among its later members, including an advisor to King Louis XIV and several military commanders. François’ cartographic legacy, however, was continued only by the various European globemakers inspired by his gores, as exemplified by the first and second bead on the present rosary.
Antonio Spano
Antonio Spano was an Italian artist from the town of Tropea in Calabria, styling himself Antonio Spano Tropiensis on some occasions. His presence in Naples in 1575 is evidenced by records of his appearance in court for failure to marry his betrothed, which he did the following year. At some point in the following decade, Spano travelled to Madrid to work as a sculptor in the decorating of the recently completed El Escorial, a contract he had secured through his master and father-in-law, Marco de Pino.
The earliest dated known work by Spano is an ivory globe held by the Morgan Library and Museum, New York, inscribed near the South Pole: “Antonius Spano tropiensis facie 1593”, by which time he was already enjoying the patronage of Philip II of Spain. Spano was granted a pension by Philip until his death in 1615, at which time it was passed onto his son, Francisco, and continued under Philip III.
Although investigations into Spano’s contributions to El Escorial have been made, and one painting briefly attributed to him, his known artistic output has thus far been limited to the globe of 1593 and an ivory rosary owned by Jacob Fugger, Bishop of Constance in the early seventeenth century, which has the attribution ‘Antonius Spanus Tropien incidebat’ on the celestial globe. As discussed below, the present rosary is in many
ways very similar to the Constance prayer beads, but shows several small but significant variations, from spelling to cartography, which raises an interesting question about its attribution.
The Rosary
The rosary, or prayer beads, have been used by Christians as early as the Desert Fathers, the hermits who lived in the Egyptian deserts and used string tied in knots to keep track of their prayers. While the style changed significantly across the ensuing millennia, the principle and the form has remained essentially the same: with the beads, knots or notches keeping count of one’s prayers, the mind is free to meditate fully on the mysteries of God. They are typically arranged with ten beads to represent a ‘decade’ of Aves (Hail Mary), with each decade preceded by a Pater Noster (Lord’s Prayer) and followed by a Gloria Patri (Glory Be).
This pattern is often repeated five or 15 times to create a much longer rosary, although single-decade rosaries are also used. Historically, they even proved popular during times of Catholic persecution, where they could be concealed more effectively than a string of 60 or more beads!
Although the Catholics of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spain certainly faced no persecution, the present example is a single-decade rosary, formed of a cross patonce and 11 beads, representing the decade of Aves and one Pater Noster.
The cross and beads that make up the present rosary are intricately engraved with Biblical images. Quotations from the Latin Vulgate Bible are inscribed upon each bead, most often around the lower pole, which serve to caption the scenes depicted.
The engravings on this rosary are near-identical to those found on Spano’s rosary made for Bishop Fugger, which are described by Küffner as ‘depictions from the prophecies of the Holy Saturday liturgy: Creation of the World, Fall of Man, Noah’s Ark and Other Old Testament Scenes’. The present beads display the same scenes taken from a selection of Old Testament books; the quotations used are from the same verses, albeit with various strange errors; and the illustrations and stylistic elements differ slightly from the Fugger rosary. Likewise, the cross is more elaborate here, and all elements connected by a chain rather than by wire links. The details of each element of the rosary are as follows:
The
Cross –
A patonce cross (30 x 30mm) with each arm terminating in three floriated points, with an engraving of two figures encircled by the words of Francis of Assisi: tu es pastor ovium. tu es vas electionis (“you are the pastor of the flock. You are the vessel of the election”). The first refers to Jesus Christ and the second to the apostle St Paul, revealing the identity of the men. On the four arms of the cross are four further male figures
seated at desks, representing the Church fathers: Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine and Pope Gregory I. The back of the cross has at its centre a tree, with the circular caption reading: “egredietur virga de radice Jesse” (“a rod will come from the stem of Jesse” - Isaiah 11:1). On the four arms are the four evangelists, each seated beside scrolls or paper, and each accompanied by the living creature with whom he is symbolically associated: Matthew with man, Mark the lion, Luke the Calf, and John the Eagle. The edges of the cross are engraved with designs including a ladder, perhaps a reference to Jacob’s dream of a stairway to heaven (Genesis 28:12), and a cross.
Bead 1: Genesis 1:1 –
The first and largest bead of the rosary (27mm diameter) is a miniature celestial globe, reflecting the opening words of the Latin Vulgate Bible: “in principio creavit Deus caelum et terram” (‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ - Genesis 1:1). Indeed, these words are written in the southern hemisphere besides the Argo Navis (Ship) constellation. The globe is filled with these constellations, illustrated and labelled in Latin, and it also bears the celestial equator and ecliptic. They are viewed in reverse of how they are seen from earth, as if to provide God’s external view, looking in at the heavens from without.
The astronomy for the first bead is taken from the celestial globe of François Demongenet. Certain details, such as the male figure seated on the Eridanus constellation, indicates that the design was taken not from the very first edition of Demongenet’s globe, but from one of the numerous later states.
Bead
2: Genesis 1:6 –
Following the celestial sphere is a bead engraved to form a tiny terrestrial globe (24mm diameter). Written in the Antarctic circle is the verse: “dixit quoque Deus: fiat firmamentum in medio aquarum: et dividat aquas” (‘And so God said, “Let there be a firmament in the middle of the waters and divide them”’ - Genesis 1:6). The globe has been engraved with impressive detail for such a small sphere, with several countries and seas labelled by name. It is different to Spano’s later globe of 1593, which took its cartography from Mario Cataro’s globe of 1577, and displays notable cartographical advances compared to earlier globes of the sixteenth century such as the Lenox Globe.
Again, the cartography is taken from Demongenet’s influential globe. Based on the world maps of Gerard Mercator, his terrestrial gores were themselves influenced by Gemma Frisius, who had produced an important globe in 1536. Frisius’ cartography appears to have been transmitted to Demogenet through Georg Hartmann’s terrestrial globe gores of 1547.
Bead 1
Bead 2
At least six different variants of Demongenet’s terrestrial gores are known to exist, which can generally be identified through the spelling of the name for Japan: Sipannge, Suango, Sipangi or Sipange. This globe, however, has Sipango, which appeared on Frisius’ original 1536 globe; whether the change here was intentional or a misreading of the source material is unclear.
Notably cartographic features include several fictitious islands given, and large landmasses at both poles, the northern marked “Groenlandia” and attached to Northern Russia, the southern continent marked “Terra Incognita”, with a large bulge where Europeans would find Australia the following century. America displays the distinct Verrazzano-shape to North America, so-named for the early Italian explorer, who made an expedition to the New World in 1524. Looking in at the waters of the Outer Banks from his ship, La Dauphine, Verrazzano concluded that they must be the Pacific. Thus on the map published after the ship’s return to Europe, and thenceforth on many maps and globes of the subsequent century, North America appears as a long, narrow isthmus, almost divided in two except for a narrow stretch of land.
While the globe bead of the Constance rosary is near-identical in cartographic terms, there are several notable differences: while Bishop Fugger’s rosary presents more illustrative details such as sea-monsters, the engraving is more heavy-handed and geographical details such as the shape of the Yucatan peninsula are less accurate than on the present globe. Interestingly, however, this globe has occasional spelling mistakes and mis-quotations in Latin. The caption ‘devicat anno 1530’ in America is a mistaken interpretation of Demongenet’s ‘devicta anno 1530’, which first appeared on Frisius’ globes, and is engraved correctly on Spano’s prayer beads for Bishop Fugger. Likewise the ghost islands in the southern Indian Ocean are also strangely rendered with spellings seen on neither any other Demogenet-inspired globes, nor the Constance rosary.
These errors, compiled with others found in the Latin engravings across the entire rosary, indicate that the present designs were executed by a different hand than the Fugger rosary, and that language may not have been the engraver’s forte!
Bead 1
Bead 2
Bead 3: Genesis 1:11 –
The third bead on the rosary (22mm diameter) shows a rugged natural landscape comprised of rolling hills covered in rivers, streams, trees and bushes. The circular text around the lower pole provides a continuation of the creation story: “et protulit terra herbam virentem, et facientem semen juxta genus suum, lignumque faciens fructum, et habens” (‘and the land brought forth vegetation, yielding seed of its own kind, and the tree bearing fruit and having...’ - Genesis 1:11).
Bead 4: Genesis 1:16 –
Following the creation of the earth and its greenery, the fourth bead (21mm diameter) depicts the creation of sun, moon and stars: “fecitque Deus duo luminaria magna: luminare maius, ut praeesset diei: et luminare minus, ut praeesset nocti: et stellas” (‘and God made two great lights: the larger light to preside over the day, and the smaller light to preside over night; and the stars’ - Genesis 1:16). The scene engraved on the bead looks out on an ocean from a wooded hillside, the sun, moon and stars all visible in the vast sky at once.
Bead 5: Genesis 1:25 –
The rosary’s fifth bead (20mm diameter) illustrates God’s creation of animals on earth, with charming details including elephants, a rhinoceros, various birds, tortoises, giraffes and sea-creatures. The text around the lower pole reads: “et fecit Deus bestias terrae juxta species suas” (‘and God made the beasts of the land, each according to its kind’ - Genesis 1:25). Bizarrely, the engraver has added the word “prophetia” (prophecy) to the end of his phrase, a word neither found in the Vulgate Latin Bible nor making sense. This is another example of several such instances of strange errors, additions and changes in Latin.
Bead 6: Genesis 1:27 –
Another instance is found on bead six (20mm diameter), on which the text surrounding the lower pole reads: “et creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem suam dies sextus”. The canonical Biblical verse has only: et creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem suam (‘and God made man in his image’ - Genesis 1:27). The addition here of “et similitudinem suam” refers back to God’s speech in Genesis 1:26 (faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram - ‘I will make man according to my image and likeness’) while “dies sextus” does not appear until Genesis 1:31, when the ‘sixth day’ is complete. Bizarrely, comparing this inscription to Spano’s rosary for Bishop Fugger offers no further insight, as that also displays an erroneous inscription, placing the creation of man on the fifth day!
The scene on the bead is set in the Garden of Eden. First, Adam is shown lying on the ground with Eve growing out of his side, extending her arms towards a large fog probably representing the breath of life. Next is shown Eve’s temptation by the serpent, as she reaches to pluck fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Finally, an angel is shown pursuing the two humans out of Eden after God discovered their disobedience.
Bead 7: Genesis 2:2 –“Complevitque Deus die septimo opus suum quod fecerat: et requievit” (‘and on the seventh day God finished the work which he had done, and he rested’ - Genesis 2:2). The seventh bead (19mm diameter) on the rosary interprets the final day of creation, God’s sabbath. The earth already shows signs of civilization, with buildings of various sizes constructed on the sea shore, and boats on the water. On the other side of the bead is an engraving of the trinity in a star-studded heaven. The Father and Son are seated and holding between them an open book bearing the letters alpha and omega, the beginning and end of the Greek alphabet, in reference to the Lord’s statement in the final book of the Bible: ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’ (Revelation 1:8). Above them flies the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove.
Bead 8: Genesis 7:5 –The eighth bead (17mm diameter) displays the damage that time can reap on even the most durable of materials. Much of the text is nearindecipherable, but the few discernable Latin words allow the inscribed verse to be identified as: “fecit ergo Noe omnia quae mandaverat ei Dominus” (‘Therefore Noah did everything that God had ordered him’ - Genesis 7:5). On the less-damaged side of the bead can be seen the great ark, with Noah’s family and the assorted animals waiting to get on board. The other side may perhaps show the colossal rains beginning to fall from heaven.
Bead 6
Bead 7
Bead 8
Bead 9 –
Bead nine (17mm diameter) strays from the chronology set up by the earlier beads. The first scene shows Moses leading the fleeing Israelites from Egypt through the Red Sea; they stand gathered on the shores as the prophet follows God’s instruction: “extende manum tuam super mare” (‘Extend your hand over the sea’ - Exodus 14:16). Then, however, the story seems to skip 20 books to the Book of Isaiah, from which the two other quotations around the base of the bead are taken: “apprehendent septem mulieres virum unum” (‘seven women will take hold of one man’ - Isaiah 4:1) and “audite, audientes me, et comedite bonum” (‘listen, my listeners, and eat what is good’ - Isaiah 55:2).
Furthermore, the second scene shows Isaiah seated on a rock before five men, with a banner extending from his hand into the air reading: “omnes sitientes, venite ad aquas” (‘All those who thirst, come to the waters’Isaiah 55:1). In effect, the Latin appears to be written backwards and the words flow upwards, as if from the prophet’s mouth.
There are well-established links between the Book of Exodus and the Book of Isaiah, both of which contain an exodus narrative, the first from captivity in Egypt to the Holy Land, and the second from captivity in Babylon back to Jerusalem. It is not entirely clear, however, why these particular quotations and scene were chosen to ornament the ninth bead of his rosary.
Bead 10 –
The Biblical references chosen for the tenth bead (15mm diameter) are also something of an enigma. Apart from the obvious themes of God and worship, the scenes do not seem to share an obvious link or connection.
The verse from the second book of laws, which is canonically tollite librum istum, et ponite eum in latere arcae (‘take this book and put it in the side of the ark’ - Deuteronomy 31:26), is here shortened to “tollite librum hunc, et ponite in arcam”. Although the corresponding illustration is corrupted by damage to the ivory, it is possible to make out the Levite priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant through the desert.
The canonical crediderunt viri Ninivitae in Deum, et praedicaverunt jejunium, et vestiti sunt saccis (‘the Ninevites believed in God and proclaimed a fast, and wore sackcloth’ - Jonah 3:5) has also been abbreviated to read: “crediderunt...Ninivitae... et vestiti sunt saccis”. Again the image has been worn away, but the city of Nineveh can be distinguished on a cliff overlooking the sea. In this case, the maker seems to have confused his stories. The prophet Jonah was ordered by God to go to the inland city of Nineveh to preach (Jonah 1:1) but instead went to the port at Joppa and boarded the boat that led him to the mouth of the famous whale (Jonah 1:17).
Bead 9
Bead 10
Bead 11
The third quotation appears as it does in the Bible: “Nabuchodonosor rex fecit statuam auream” (‘King Nebuchadnezzar made a golden statue’ - Daniel 3:1). This line begins the story of Nebuchadnezzar’s great statue of gold, which his Jewish advisors refused to worship. For this slight, he ordered them to be burned alive, a punishment from which the Lord saved them (Daniel 3:28). The corresponding scene on the bead shows the king’s statue, which appears to be of a woman and, interestingly, to have been erected on cliffs overlooking the sea. The sentence from which the quotation is taken actually ends by naming the statue’s location as “the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon”, making the insistence on depicting the scenes in coastal settings strange.
Bead 11 –
The eleventh and final bead on the rosary (14mm diameter) also bears three Old Testament scenes, once more taken from disparate books.
Chronologically, the first scene shows six Israelites, wearing wildly anachronous hats, standing around a fire pit roasting an animal. It is captioned with the verse: “et edent carnes festinanter illa assas igni” (‘And they will hurriedly eat meat roasted on the fire’). The original adverb ‘nocte’ (‘by night’ - Exodus 12:8) has been replaced with ‘festinanter’ (‘hurriedly’). A few verses later, in Exodus 12:11, God does tell Moses that the Israelites will eat ‘festinanter’, but it is not apparent why the artist has chosen to substitute the word here. It is also interesting that he seems to have set the scene in the desert, as if after the flight from Egypt, when in reality God is explaining the Passover feast, which is held before the Israelites fled to the sands of Sinai.
The next scene shows Ezekiel’s vision of himself in the Valley of Dry Bones, during which the bones of the dead are brought to life once more, symbolizing both the resurrection of the dead and the restoration of the house of Israel after the Bablyonian captivity. The caption describes the prophet’s vision: et accesserunt ossa ad ossa, unumquodque ad iuncturam suam (‘They came together, bone to bone, each to its own joint’ - Ezekiel 37:7). There is also a speech banner on the illustration, showing Ezekiel to be addressing the bones: ossa, audite verbum Domini (‘bones, hear the word of God’ - Ezekiel 37:4), although an adjective found in the original verse has been omitted.
The third quotation around the lower pole reads: “post haec super terram visus est et cuas hom”..., an interpretation of the verse: post haec in terris visus est, et cum hominibus conversatus est (‘After this he was seen on earth, and conversed with men’ - Baruch 3:38). While the truncation of the quotation can be attributed to lack of space, the decision to replace the canonical ‘in terris’ (‘on the earth’) with ‘super terram’ (‘above the earth’) is inexplicable, especially with its theological implications.
Bead 9
Bead 10
Bead 11
The scene shown above the verse depicts Baruch seated in front of a small audience (Baruch 1:3), a banner extending from his mouth reading: “sed qui ?os novit sapientiam”. This quotation cannot be found, either complete or paraphrased, in the Vulgate Latin Bible. The closest verse, semantically and linguistically, is: sed qui scit universa novit eam, et adinvenit eam prudentia (‘but he who knows [knowledge] knows all things, and found her through his own wisdom...’ - Baruch 3:32), with ‘sapitentiam’ potentially serving as a synonym for ‘prudentia’.
Provenance and Rarity
The only known rosary that can be definitively attributed to Antonio Spano is held in the Cathedral of Constance, having been owned by, and likely made for, Jacob Fugger, Bishop of Constance (1604-1626), a scion of the extraordinarily wealthy banking family. “The Fugger family were among the largest book collectors in central Europe of the sixteenth century. Holdings from the Fuggers’s collections are now among the treasured possessions of the Bavarian State Library in Munich, the Austrian National Library in Vienna, and the Vatican Library in Rome … The Fugger libraries were investments in education and learning; they represent the progressive turn of the family, which had become wealthy in commerce, towards learned and literary interests” (Haberlein).
The original owners of the present rosary may have been another wealthy and prominent family: the Boncompagni, from which hailed a number of historic figures, including numerous bishops, cardinals and Pope Gregory XIII (1572-1585), who commissioned Ignazio Danti to paint the Vatican’s famous 120 metre Gallery of Maps (1580-1583). When the family migrated from Saxony to Italy in the tenth century, they changed their name from the Germanic Dragon von Saxon to Boncompagni, meaning ‘good friend’. Nonetheless, later records indicate an attempt to honour their true name with the addition of ‘Dragoni’. It is unsurprising, then, that the family symbol is a dragon.
The celestial globe that forms the first bead of this rosary displays two coats of arms; one is certainly the Boncompagni dragon, and the other perhaps a lion rampant. Notably, the former shows only the dragon on a decorative shield, not combined with the three stripes that characterise the coat of arms of the famous Boncompagni-Ludovisi branch of the family formed later.
Among the most prominent members of the family was Giacomo Boncompagni (1548-1612), the illegitimate son of Gregory XIII and a great patron of the arts, who sponsored many artists, writers and composers. In 1575, King Philip II of Spain, who was also Spano’s patron, named Giacomo commander-in-chief of the Spanish armies in Lombardy and Piedmont. His wife, Constanza Sforza, was the daughter of the Count of Santa Fiora, whose coat of arms displays a lion rampant holding a quince.
These facts all point to Giacomo Boncompagni as the original owner, and perhaps commissioner, of this rosary.
Whether the rosary was made for Boncompagni by Spano himself or a different artist, it is not clear; nor is it obvious whether, if Spano, these beads preceded or followed the Fugger rosary. What is evident is that one undoubtedly informed the other, and given that the mistakes in the Latin found on the present rosary are, in general, not found on that in Constance, it seems most likely that latter was made after the former, replicating its design and correcting (most of!) the inscriptions.
It may therefore be the case that it was made for Giacomo Boncompagni, and that it went with the Italian to Madrid during one of his visits to his patron there. Present at Philip’s court was Antonio Spano and, on occasion, representatives of the Fugger family, with whom the Spanish king held numerous financial contracts. And so it may have come about that Spano was commissioned to make a similar rosary for the Jacob Fugger who would later become Bishop of Constance, correcting the erroneous Latin as he did so.
Scientific Analysis
Extensive laboratory examination of the Boncompagni Rosary has “confirmed the rosary’s material as an animal product consisting of the mineral hydroxyapatite, thus ivory, tusk, bone or tooth. Microscopic examination “included visual study for surface features that might complement the results of the material analysis. However, no features characteristic of particular types of material were noted - no Schreger lines (features characteristic of elephant ivory), dentine rings (characteristic of killer or sperm whale), secondary dentine or cementum rings (characteristic of walrus) or other identifying features were observed... Only bone can be ruled out, due to the lack of visible pore structure present on the surface of the bead.
“The radiocarbon date of the sample material removed from the bead was determined as 512 years b.p. ±26 years. After calibration, this yielded a date range of 1397-1446 CE at 95.4% probability. It is important to note that the dates determined by this technique correspond to the age of the animal from which it was taken when the material was formed; that is, for example, elephant tusks are formed over the lifetime of the animal, in rings, similar to how a tree grows in rings. Material from different locations from a single tusk taken from an elephant of significant age will have different ages; each of which will represent the year/s in which that material was produced by the animal, as a measure of the atmospheric carbon imbibed in those year/s. Equally, such materials will undergo wear during an animal’s lifetime. As noted, the type of animal the material originates from could not be determined.
“In consideration of these factors, it may be suggested that the material could have first been available for use either:
• At the earliest, not much before circa 1400, if 3 years are added to the earliest date of 1397 under the assumption that some time for trade and supply of the material to the craftsman should be added.
• At the latest, not much after circa 1449 (again adding 3 years to the latest date in the range, 1446).
“It should also be noted that radiocarbon dating cannot provide information regarding the date in which a material was actually worked, only the dates after which it would have been available. Thus, given the data obtained, we may say that the bead may plausibly have been carved from the 15th century onwards.”
Having been in private hands for over four centuries, the Boncompagni Rosary is a new discovery that contributes not only to Spano’s extant body of work, but also to the understanding of late-sixteenth and earlyseventeenth century devotional objects.
FERGUSON, James [and MARTIN, Benjamin]
A New Globe of the Earth by James Ferguson.
Publication [London], James Ferguson, J. Mynde Sc. [engraver], [c1775].
Description Globe, 12 hand-coloured engraved paper gores, over papier mâché and plaster sphere, varnished, housed in original shagreen case with rims painted red and two original brass hooks and eyes.
Dimensions
Diameter: 75mm (3 inches).
References
Dekker GLB0057 (edition III- see p.132, table 9.1); see fig. 9.100; James Ferguson, Life of James Ferguson, F.R.S. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); John Millburn, Wheelwright of the Heavens. The Life and Work of James Ferguson (London, 1988).
26,500 AUD
The coast (of Australia) is clear
A fine pocket globe, showing the discoveries made by Captain Cook aboard the Endeavour.
Biography
James Ferguson (1710-1776) was a Scottish autodidact who settled in London after a peripatetic life involving spells as a shepherd, miller, engineer, astronomer and lecturer. In his autobiography, he claims that, at the age of 20, he “made a globe in three weeks at my father’s, having turned the ball thereof out of a piece of wood, which ball I covered with paper, and delineated a map of the world upon it—made the meridian ring and horizon of wood—covered them with paper, and graduated them” (Ferguson, p.21). In 1755, he purchased the vast majority of the plates and instruments previously owned by John Senex, a leading producer of pocket globe. Ferguson subsequently designed his own pocket globe and produced several editions, but in 1757 he sold his business to Benjamin Martin, overwhelmed by his numerous responsibilities. Ferguson is most widelyknown as a remarkable example of self-education, and for his production of scientific instruments and apparatus, notably orreries.
Geography
The globe features updated cartography from Ferguson’s c1756 globe. Benjamin Martin acquired Ferguson’s plates in 1757 and produced an updated globe in c1775. In this new edition, the track of Captain Cook’s first voyage is marked as the “Endeavour tract”, and the coastlines of Australia and New Zealand have been updated with his discoveries.
Astronomy
The celestial cartography, lining the case, is the same as Ferguson’s 1756 globe.
[ANONYMOUS after MOLL, Herman]
A Correct Globe with the new Discoveries. [and] A Correct Globe with ye New Constelations of Dr. Halley &c.
Publication [London, c1775].
Description Globe, 12 hand-coloured engraved paper gores, clipped at 70 degrees latitude, with two polar calottes, over a papier mâché and plaster sphere, housed within original shagreen over paste-board clamshell case, with hooks and eyes, lined with two sets of 12 hand-coloured engraved celestial gores, clipped at 70 degrees declination, varnished.
Dimensions Diameter: 70mm (2.75 inches).
References Dekker GLB0196; for Moll’s globe see Lamb, Collins and Schmidt 5.4 and Sumira 21; Worms and Baynton-Williams, pp.456-458.
17,000 AUD
Showing
the track of Cook’s ‘Endeavour’ voyage
A pocket globe after Herman Moll.
Biography
Herman Moll (?1654-1732) moved to London from Germany or the Low Countries, sometime before 1678. His career in London would span some 60 years and see him move from a jobbing engraver to a successful publisher of maps and atlases. He was part of the intellectual circle that gathered at Jonathan’s Coffee House, counting Robert Hooke, Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift amongst his acquaintance. Moll even provided a map for Defoe’s work ‘Robinson Crusoe’ showing the track of Crusoe’s supposed voyage, and is mentioned by Lemuel Gulliver in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’. This globe was formerly attributed to George Adams Snr, on the basis that it appeared in one of his instruments. However, it also appears in the instruments of several other publishers, which makes this unlikely. His stock was bought by Thomas and John Bowles, and Robert Sayer - it is possible that the copperplates for the globe gores were perpetuated by either of these publishers.
Geography
Moll’s 1710 pocket globe - the only one he ever produced - was influenced by the voyages of William Dampier, his friend and collaborator. Dampier (1651-1715), sometime pirate and explorer, was the first Englishman to explore Australia, and the first to circumnavigate the world three times. He published an account of his adventures in ‘A New Voyage Around the World’ in 1697. The maps in ‘New Voyage’ and another work, ‘A Voyage to New Holland’, were created by Moll. Moll’s globe contained the tracks of Dampier’s voyage, updated coastlines based on his discoveries, and records of trade winds after Dampier’s treatise on the subject.
The present example updates Moll’s original with the latest discoveries. California appears correctly as a peninsula, rather than the island originally portrayed by Moll - conflicting reports from Spanish explorers of the region had given rise to confusion as to whether it was attached to the mainland or not. California’s status was confirmed after the explorations of Juan Bautista de Anza (1774-76). The tracks of Dampier’s voyage have been partially erased and overlaid with the track of the first voyage of Captain James Cook (incorrectly dated “Cook’s Track 1760”), and the geography of Australasia adjusted accordingly, including the labelling of Cook Strait. It also adds the label “North.n Ocean” to the North Pole, although this is a preference of the cartographer rather than any new information, as the area was still largely unexplored.
Astronomy
The ecliptic is graduated and provided with the signs of the zodiac. The polar circles and tropics are drawn but not named. A magnitude table (1-6) sits below Ursa Major. The 48 Ptolemaic constellations are marked, with four non-Ptolemaic constellations. Only five of the 12 southern Plancian constellations are named, and Scutum is not labelled among the Hevelian constellations.
[ANONYMOUS after MOLL, Herman]
A Correct Globe with the new Discoveries. [and] A Correct Globe with ye New Constelations of Dr. Halley &c.
Publication [London, c1775].
Description Globe, 12 hand-coloured engraved paper gores, clipped at 70 degrees latitude, with two polar calottes, over a papier mâché and plaster sphere, housed within original shagreen over paste-board clamshell case, with hooks and eyes, lined with two sets of 12 hand-coloured engraved celestial gores, clipped at 70 degrees declination, varnished.
Dimensions
Diameter: 70mm (2.75 inches).
References Dekker GLB0196; for Moll’s globe see Lamb, Collins and Schmidt 5.4 and Sumira 21; Worms and Baynton-Williams, pp.456-458.
17,000 AUD
Showing
the track of Cook’s ‘Endeavour’ voyage
A pocket globe after Herman Moll.
Biography
Herman Moll (?1654-1732) moved to London from Germany or the Low Countries, sometime before 1678. His career in London would span some 60 years and see him move from a jobbing engraver to a successful publisher of maps and atlases. He was part of the intellectual circle that gathered at Jonathan’s Coffee House, counting Robert Hooke, Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift amongst his acquaintance. Moll even provided a map for Defoe’s work ‘Robinson Crusoe’ showing the track of Crusoe’s supposed voyage, and is mentioned by Lemuel Gulliver in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’. This globe was formerly attributed to George Adams Snr, on the basis that it appeared in one of his instruments. However, it also appears in the instruments of several other publishers, which makes this unlikely. His stock was bought by Thomas and John Bowles, and Robert Sayer - it is possible that the copperplates for the globe gores were perpetuated by either of these publishers.
Geography
Moll’s 1710 pocket globe - the only one he ever produced - was influenced by the voyages of William Dampier, his friend and collaborator. Dampier (1651-1715), sometime pirate and explorer, was the first Englishman to explore Australia, and the first to circumnavigate the world three times. He published an account of his adventures in ‘A New Voyage Around the World’ in 1697. The maps in ‘New Voyage’ and another work, ‘A Voyage to New Holland’, were created by Moll. Moll’s globe contained the tracks of Dampier’s voyage, updated coastlines based on his discoveries, and records of trade winds after Dampier’s treatise on the subject.
The present example updates Moll’s original with the latest discoveries. California appears correctly as a peninsula, rather than the island originally portrayed by Moll - conflicting reports from Spanish explorers of the region had given rise to confusion as to whether it was attached to the mainland or not. California’s status was confirmed after the explorations of Juan Bautista de Anza (1774-76). The tracks of Dampier’s voyage have been partially erased and overlaid with the track of the first voyage of Captain James Cook (incorrectly dated “Cook’s Track 1760”), and the geography of Australasia adjusted accordingly, including the labelling of Cook Strait. It also adds the label “North.n Ocean” to the North Pole, although this is a preference of the cartographer rather than any new information, as the area was still largely unexplored.
Astronomy
The ecliptic is graduated and provided with the signs of the zodiac. The polar circles and tropics are drawn but not named. A magnitude table (1-6) sits below Ursa Major. The 48 Ptolemaic constellations are marked, with four non-Ptolemaic constellations. Only five of the 12 southern Plancian constellations are named, and Scutum is not labelled among the Hevelian constellations.
LANE, [Thomas after Nicholas LANE]
Lane’s Pocket Globe.
Publication London, 1807.
Description Globe, 12 hand-coloured engraved paper gores, clipped at 70 degrees latitude, with two polar calottes, over a papier mâché and plaster sphere, paste-over imprint to cartouche, varnished, housed in original red calf over paste-board clamshell case, with hooks and eyes, lined with two sets of 12 hand-coloured engraved celestial gores.
Dimensions 70mm (2.75 inches).
References Dekker, pp.393-394; Sumira 35 and 45; Worms and Baynton-Williams, p.451.
35,000 AUD
An updated Lane
Biography
The present globe is the work of Nicholas Lane (fl.1775-1783) whose business was particularly associated with pocket globes. This present globe, with completely new terrestrial plates, was first issued in 1779. His son, Thomas, who had taken over the buisness following his father’s death, updated the plates in 1807 and sold them wholesale and retail. With retails such as George Minshull, adding their name to the globe.
Geography
“New South Wales, Botany Bay and Cape Byron are depicted in New Holland (Australia), and “Buenos Ayres” (Buenos Aires) appears in South America.” (Sumira) Thomas would be very thorough with updating the globe as: “ Two years later [1809] there were more changes: Dimens Land (Tasmania) is separated from New Holland by the Bass Strait; Port Jackson (Sydney) is added to the eastern coast of the mainland; and Sharks’ Bay and ‘South C.’ are newly marked on the western side. The Antipodes of London are also shown. In northwest America, “New Albion” and the “Stony Mountains” (the Rockies) have been added. Curiously, the date of Captain Cook’s death, 14 February 1779, is another late addition squeezed in below the Sandwich Islands” (Sumira).
Astronomy
The celestial gores, which were acquired by Nicholas Lane from Richard Cushee sometime in the mid-eighteenth century, are geocentric in orientation. The difference is most noticeable in the orientation of Ursa Major, with the bear facing the other direction. The deep green colour is characteristic of Lane globes. Minshull has put his own stamp on the celestial gores by only colouring the constellations in green.
LANE, [Thomas after Nicholas LANE]
[Pocket Globe] West. Bazaar, Soho Square London.
Publication London, Soho, [1808].
Description Globe, 12 hand-coloured engraved paper gores, clipped at 70 degrees latitude, with two polar calottes, over a papier mâché and plaster sphere, paste-over imprint to cartouche, varnished, housed in original black shagreen over paste-board clamshell case, with hooks and eyes, lined with two sets of 12 hand-coloured engraved celestial gores.
Dimensions 70mm (2.75 inches).
References Dekker, pp.393-394; Sumira, 35 and 45; Worms and Baynton-Williams, p.451.
23,000 AUD
An extremely rare pocket globe that preserves a tangible link to a working woman in early-nineteenth century London.
The globe is the work of Nicholas Lane (fl1775-1783), whose business was particularly associated with pocket globes. First issued in 1779, the plates were updated in 1807 by Lane’s son, Thomas, who took over the business after his father’s death. Sold wholesale, often retailers would paste their own name and address over that of Lane in the cartouche – as the present example, with its imprint “West. Soho Bazaar, London”, reflects.
The Soho Bazaar
The Soho Bazaar was established in 1816, in what is now 4-6 Soho Square, by John Trotter, an army contractor who had amassed considerable wealth supplying the British Army and Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. It had as its aim to support the widows and daughters of army officers and other individuals in need, providing a safe space for single women to trade. On sale were a variety of products: jewellery, millinery, baskets, gloves, lace, potted plants, books – and, apparently, pocket globes. The “West” on the imprint of the present example is, most likely, the woman who sold the globe, making this an exceptionally unusual piece, in that it is a globe that records the name of a working-class woman.
The Geography
The present globe can be dated to 1808. It features some of the revisions made by Thomas Lane that appear on the 1809 globe and not on the 1807, as recorded by Sumira, but not all. Dimens Land (Tasmania) has been separated from New Holland (Australia), with Port Jackson (Sydney) added to the west coast of the mainland. Sharks’ Bay, “South C.”, the “Stony Mountains” (the Rockies), and the death of Captain Cook are all, however, absent.
Given that the Soho Bazaar did not open until 1816, this makes the globe at least eight years outdated by the time of its sale. The most likely explanation for this is that Lane sold “out-of-date” stock at a reduced price, making it affordable to a woman like the anonymous “West” who held stalls at the Bazaar.
Astronomy
The celestial gores, which were acquired by from Richard Cushee at some point in the mid-eighteenth century, are geocentric in orientation. The difference is most noticeable in the orientation of Ursa Major, with the bear facing the other direction. The deep green colour is characteristic of Lane’s globes.
MINSHULL, [George] [after LANE, Nicholas; ADAMS, Dudley and FERGUSON, James]
Minshull’s.
Publication [London, c1813].
Description
Globe, 12 hand-coloured engraved paper gores, clipped at 70 degrees latitude, with two polar calottes, over a papier mâché and plaster sphere, paste-over imprint to cartouche, varnished, housed in original shagreen over paste-board clamshell case, with hooks and eyes, lined with two sets of 12 hand-coloured engraved celestial gores.
Dimensions Diameter: 75mm (3 inches).
References Dekker, pp.393-394; Sumira 35 and 45; Worms and Baynton-Williams, p.451.
21,000 AUD
A toymaker’s globe
Biography
George Minshull (fl1800-1835) was a toymaker and carver. Although based in Birmingham, there was a “George Minshull & Son” registered in Hatton Garden in London in 1814, suggesting the globe was sold there. It was common for small cartographic items and scientific instruments to be sold alongside toys.
Though the globe bears Minshull’s name it is actually the work of Nicholas Lane (fl1775-1783) whose business was particularly associated with pocket globes, and seemed to have sold globes wholesale, to retailers such as Linshull. Little is known about Lane’s output, but Dekker suggests that his three inch globes were produced from the earlier works of James Ferguson and Dudley Adams. When Dudley went bankrupt in about 1810, the copper plates appear to have come into the hands of the Lane firm, where the old cartouche was completely erased in favour of a new circular one. However, the name of the engraver, J. Mynde, was kept just below the cartouche. Later on, after 1820, Lane would erase Mynde’s name from the plates.
Lane not only produced globes under his own name but also sold them wholesale, as here: with Minshull’s name pasted over the title.
Geography
Australia is well delineated with “New South Wales” labelled along with “Botany Bay” and “Port Jackson” noted. The Bering Straits are named. India is labelled as “Hindoostan” with “Tartary” in the north. To the west coast of America, “California” is labelled along with “New Albion” and “Nootka Sound”, the scene of the Nootka Crisis of 1790.
Astronomy
The celestial gores are taken from the Adams-Ferguson plates, but includes Lane’s added hour angles along the equator in the southern hemisphere and a zodiacal belt along the ecliptic.
A toymaker’s globe
MINSHULL,
George after LANE, Nicholas
Minshull’s 1816.
Publication [London], 1816.
Description Globe, 12 hand-coloured engraved paper gores, clipped at 70 degrees latitude, with two polar calottes, over a papier mâché and plaster sphere, paste-over imprint to cartouche, varnished, housed in original shagreen over paste-board clamshell case, with hooks and eyes, lined with two sets of 12 hand-coloured engraved celestial gores.
Dimensions
Diameter: 70mm (2.75 inches).
References Dekker, pp.393-394; Sumira 35 and 45; Worms and Baynton-Williams, p.451.
28,500 AUD
Biography
George Minshull (fl1800-1835) was a toymaker and carver. Although based in Birmingham, there was a “George Minshull & Son” registered in Hatton Garden in London in 1814, suggesting the globe was sold there. It was common for small cartographic items and scientific instruments to be sold alongside toys.
Geography
Minshull’s globe is an updated version of Thomas Lane’s issue of his father’s pocket globe. Minshull was one of several makers who reissued Lane family globes - his imprint has been pasted over the original. Nicholas Lane’s pocket globe, with completely new terrestrial plates, was first issued in 1779. His son, Thomas, updated the plates in 1807 and sold them wholesale. The present globe is based on Thomas’s updated plates.
“New South Wales, Botany Bay and Cape Byron are depicted in New Holland (Australia), and “Buenos Ayres” (Buenos Aires) appears in South America. Two years later there were more changes: Dimens Land (Tasmania) is separated from New Holland by the Bass Strait; Port Jackson (Sydney) is added to the eastern coast of the mainland; and Sharks’ Bay and ‘South C.’ are newly marked on the western side. The Antipodes of London are also shown. In northwest America, “New Albion” and the “Stony Mountains” (the Rockies) have been added. Curiously, the date of Captain Cook’s death, 14 February 1779, is another late addition squeezed in below the Sandwich Islands” (Sumira).
By 1816, the date of the globe shown here, the geography has been altered yet again: “At the southern tip of the Californian peninsula, “C. S. Lucas” (Cape San Lucas) is now shown... “Dampier’s Anchor”, where William Dampier first reached Australia, is marked off the north west coast of New Holland, and we see a mysterious “Labyrinth” [The Great Barrier Reef] off the north-east coast” (Sumira).
Astronomy
The celestial gores, which were acquired by Nicholas Lane from Richard Cushee sometime in the mid-eighteenth century, are geocentric in orientation. The difference is most noticeable in the orientation of Ursa Major, with the bear facing the other direction. The deep green colour is characteristic of Lane globes. Minshull has put his own stamp on the celestial gores by only colouring the constellations in green.
LANE, [Thomas after ADAMS, Dudley and FERGUSON, James]
Two globes, one terrestrial and one celestial, each with 12 hand-coloured engraved paper gores, one calotte at north pole, over a papier mâché and plaster sphere, varnished, housed within original shagreen over paste-board clamshell case, with hooks and eyes, lined with two sets of 12 hand-coloured engraved celestial gores, varnished.
Dimensions
Diameter: 75mm (3 inches).
References Dekker, pp.393-394; Sumira 35 and 45; Worms and Baynton-Williams, p.387.
75,000 AUD
A celestial and terrestrial globe
A magnificent pair of Lane’s terrestrial and celestial pocket globes.
Biography
The present globe is the work of Nicholas Lane (fl.1775-1783) whose business was particularly associated with pocket globes. Little is known about Lane’s output, but Dekker suggests that his three inch globes were produced from the earlier works of Ferguson and Dudley Adams. When Dudley went bankrupt in about 1817, the copper plates appear to have come into the hands of the Lane firm, now run by Thomas Lane (fl1801-1829), where the old cartouche was completely erased in favour of a new circular one. However, the name of the engraver, J. Mynde, was kept just below the cartouche. Later on, after 1820, Lane would erase Mynde’s name from the plates.
Geography
There have been several additions to this “improved” globe: compass points to the west of Cape Horn, monsoons in the Indian Ocean and the Great Wall of China. “Enderby’s Land 1833” is marked (part of Antarctica) discovered and named by the John Briscoe.
The tracks of Captain James Cook’s voyages are shown and the coastline of Australia drawn according to his reports. The most notable addition is the marking on the west coast of Australia of the “Swan R. Settlement”.
The Swan River Colony was the brainchild of Captain James Stirling who in 1827, aboard HMS Success, had explored the Swan River. On his return to London he petitioned Parliament to grant land for a settlement along the river. A consortium was set up by the MP Potter McQueen, but was disbanded after the Colonial Office refused to give them preference over independent settlers. One of the members of the consortium, Thomas Peel, did, however, accept the terms set down by Colonial Office. In late 1829, Peel arrived with 300 settlers and was granted 250,000 acres. The first reports of the new colony arrived back in England in late January 1830. They described the poor conditions and the land as being totally unfit for agriculture. They went on to say that the settlers were in a state of “near starvation” and (incorrectly) said that the colony had been abandoned. As a result of these reports, many people cancelled their migration plans or diverted to Cape Town or New South Wales.
Astronomy
The celestial gores, which were acquired by Nicholas Lane from Richard Cushee sometime in the mid-eighteenth century, are geocentric in orientation. The difference is most noticeable in the orientation of Ursa Major, with the bear facing the other direction. All three sets of celestial gores nave been coloured differently, in order to highlight different aspects of the heavens. The concave set housing the terrestrial globe, in a yellow wash, mark and highlight the ecliptic in red; the celestial globe richly colours the constrellations, whereas the concave set housing the globe the night sky is coloured blue with the constellations left uncoloured.
LANE, [Thomas after ADAMS, Dudley; and FERGUSON, James]
Lane’s Improved Globe.
Publication London, [c1833].
Description
Terrestrial globe lined with 12 handcoloured engraved paper gores, one calotte at north pole, over a papier mâché and plaster sphere, varnished, housed within original shagreen over paste-board clamshell case, with hooks and eyes, lined with two sets of 12 hand-coloured engraved celestial gores, varnished.
Dimensions
Diameter: 75mm (3 inches).
References Dekker, pp.393-394; Sumira 35 and 45; Worms and Baynton-Williams, p.387.
28,500 AUD
The Swan River Colony
A magnificent Lane’s terrestrial pocket globe.
Biography
The present globe is the work of Nicholas Lane (fl.1775-1783) whose business was particularly associated with pocket globes. Little is known about Lane’s output, but Dekker suggests that his three inch globes were produced from the earlier works of Ferguson and Dudley Adams. When Dudley went bankrupt in about 1817, the copper plates appear to have come into the hands of the Lane firm, now run by Thomas Lane (fl1801-1829), where the old cartouche was completely erased in favour of a new circular one. However, the name of the engraver, J. Mynde, was kept just below the cartouche. Later on, after 1820, Lane would erase Mynde’s name from the plates.
Geography
There have been several additions to this “improved” globe: compass points to the west of Cape Horn, monsoons in the Indian Ocean and the Great Wall of China. “Enderby’s Land 1833” is marked (part of Antarctica) discovered and named by the John Briscoe.
The tracks of Captain James Cook’s voyages are shown and the coastline of Australia drawn according to his reports. The most notable addition is the marking on the west coast of Australia of the “Swan R. Settlement”.
The Swan River Colony was the brainchild of Captain James Stirling who in 1827, aboard HMS Success, had explored the Swan River. On his return to London he petitioned Parliament to grant land for a settlement along the river. A consortium was set up by the MP Potter McQueen, but was disbanded after the Colonial Office refused to give them preference over independent settlers. One of the members of the consortium, Thomas Peel, did, however, accept the terms set down by Colonial Office. In late 1829, Peel arrived with 300 settlers and was granted 250,000 acres. The first reports of the new colony arrived back in England in late January 1830. They described the poor conditions and the land as being totally unfit for agriculture. They went on to say that the settlers were in a state of “near starvation” and (incorrectly) said that the colony had been abandoned. As a result of these reports, many people cancelled their migration plans or diverted to Cape Town or New South Wales.
Astronomy
The celestial gores, which were acquired by Nicholas Lane from Richard Cushee sometime in the mid-eighteenth century, are geocentric in orientation. The difference is most noticeable in the orientation of Ursa Major, with the bear facing the other direction. All three sets of celestial gores nave been coloured differently, in order to highlight different aspects of the heavens. The concave set housing the terrestrial globe, in a yellow wash, mark and highlight the ecliptic in red; the celestial globe richly colours the constrellations, whereas the concave set housing the globe the night sky is coloured blue with the constellations left uncoloured.
