1858 Colton's Map of the Western Hemisphere
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Description: This rare hand colored map is a copper plate engraving, dating to 1858 by the well known 19th century American Mapmaker Colton. It is a representation of the Western Hemisphere, including North and South America. Oceanic features such as the Sargasso Sea This map is from the rare transitional Colton’s Cabinet Atlas. This rare map indicates products by region, temperature, and general elevation. The California Gold region is clearly noted. Map is dated 1858.
Date: 1858
References: None found.
Cartographer: Joseph Hutchins Colton (1800 – 1893) was an important American map and atlas publisher active from 1833 to the early 1890s. Colton’s firm arose from humble beginnings when he moved to New York in 1831 and befriended the established engraver Samuel Stiles. Colton recognized an emerging market in railroad maps and immigrant guides. Not a cartographer or engraver himself, Colton’s initial business practice mostly involved purchasing the copyrights of other cartographers, most notably David H. Burr, and reissuing them with updated engraving and border work. His first maps, produced in 1833, were based on earlier Burr maps and depicted New York State and New York City. Between 1833 and 1855 Colton would proceed to publish a large corpus of guidebooks and railroad maps which proved to be very popular. In the early 1850s Colton brought his two sons, George Woolworth Colton (1827 - 1901) and Charles B. Colton (1832 - 1916), into the map business. G. W. Colton, trained as a cartographer and engraver, was particularly inspired by the idea of creating a large and detailed world atlas to compete established European firms for the U.S. market. In 1855 G.W. Colton issued volume one the impressive two volume Colton’s Atlas of the World. Volume two followed a year later. Possibly because of the expense of purchasing a two volume atlas set, the sales of the Atlas of the World did not meet Colton’s expectations and it was thus that, in 1856, they also issued the Atlas as a single volume. The maps contained in this superb work were all original engravings and most bear an 1855 copyright. All of the maps were surrounded by an attractive spiral motif border that would become an hallmark of Colton’s atlas maps well into the 1880s. In 1857 the slightly smaller Colton’s General Atlas replaced the Atlas of the World. Most early editions of the General Atlas published from 1857 to 1859 do not have the trademark Colton spiral border, which was removed to allow the maps to fit into a smaller format volume. Their customers must have missed the border because it was reinstated in 1860 and remained in all subsequent publications of the atlas. Also around this time, despite high volume sales, the Colton firm must have stumbled financially. Sometime in 1859 Colton seems to have formed some sort of alliance, possibly based on a financial bailout, with cartographic entrepreneurs Alvin Jewitt Johnson and Ross C. Browning. This arrangement gave Johnson and Browning access to many of Colton’s map plates and gave birth to Johnson’s New Illustrated (Steel Plate) Family Atlas. The Johnson’s Atlas was published parallel to the Colton atlas well in to the 1880s. The Colton firm itself also published several other atlases including an Atlas of America, the Illustrated Cabinet Atlas, the Octavo Atlas of the Union, and Colton’s Quarto Atlas of the World. They also published a large corpus of pocket maps and guides.
Size: Printed area measures 10 x 11 inches (25.4 x 27.94 centimeters)
Condition: Very good. Light foxing here and there. Scratch that does not penetrate paper in South America - not easily seen.
Code: WesternHemi-colton-1858 (Necessary for phone orders : 646-320-8650)
Framing: We offer optional framing services. The fee to frame and mat this map is 175.00 USD plus 25.00 USD shipping. This optional service is in addition to the cost of the map itself. Conservation framing is an excellent way to beautify and protect your antique map. Click here to read about our framing services and see our frame samples. To order framing, please call our customer service number.
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