World (sold)

The legendary Blue Map of China under the Great Qing, one of the rarest, largest, and most aesthetically magnificent Chinese maps ever made. Published in 1811 (Jiaqing 16) in the Qing Dynasty, this Chinese map by Huang Qianren (黃千人, 1694–1771) is of utmost significance. Although ostensibly a map of China, the coverage of this map in fact extends to all lands touched by the influence Qing Empire, including England, Holland, Southeast Asia, Arabia, and Africa. As such it can be considered a political manifesto lionizing the unity and majesty of Qing China as well as a functional administrative document. (more details)

This is a beautiful example, in rich original color, of the world map of the 1486 Ulm Ptolemy: regarded as the most beautiful, printed world map of the 15th century. The present example is one of the finest to appear on the market in recent years. It appeared in the first edition of Ptolemy printed north of the Alps, and as such it provided the foundation for the revolution in geographical knowledge that occurred in the opening years of the 16th century. The 'world' as depicted here is mainly the Oikumene, the inhabited world as it was known to 2nd century Romans. It covers the 'Old World' from the islands of the Atlantic Ocean (both real and legendary) to Indochina, and from the Arctic to the Tropic of Capricorn. But this was also the first printed world map to depart from a purely Ptolemaic model, offering more contemporaneous knowledge: the early depiction of Scandinavia and Iceland. (more details)

A seminal 1806 (Jiaqing 11) Qing Dynasty Chinese map of utmost importance and rarity, this is the earliest known printing of Huang Qianren's (黃千人, 1694–1771) grand and spacious map of the Great Qing Empire of China. Huang Qianren first drew this map ... (more details)

A foundational work of Renaissance cartography: this is the first, acquirable, printed map attempting a measured representation of the known world. The world map from the Rome edition of Ptolemy, in its 1478 printing it is preceded only by the unacquirable 1477 Bologna Ptolemy, the Medieval mappamundi of the Rudimentum Novitorum and the schematic 1472 Isidorus T-O map. Ptolemy's second-century innovation in representing the three-dimensional world with a grid on a projection, using mathematical methods to produce an accurate map, provided the basis of all modern cartography. Of all the early, printed versions of Ptolemy's maps, those produced for the Rome edition are considered to be the finest until Mercator's 1578 edition of the work. (more details)

This is a beautiful example of Cornelis De Jode's 1593 double-polar projection map of the world. It is among the most striking early world maps, and among the earliest to introduce the double hemispheric polar projection. Moreover, as a competitor to Ortelius' cartography, it is the sole obtainable map to preserve the innovative Guillaume Postel / Antwerp Unicum cartography. The map is moreover exceedingly rare, having been published in only a single edition. (more details)

This beautiful, extremely rare, separately-issued, double hemisphere carte á figures world map captures the most desirable elements of 17th century Dutch decorative cartography in one composition - including an Amsterdam imprint and the prominently displayed patronym of 'Willem Blaeu'. Both the imprint and the professed authorship were deliberately misleading: the map was engraved in Venice, not Amsterdam, and it has been attributed to the illustrator and printer Stefano Mozzi Scolari. The map is dated 1655. It is perhaps ironic that of the Dutch mapmakers from whom Scolari sourced this map, not one element appears to have been drawn from Blaeu, apart from his name. The engraver was not fully committed to deception: faintly in the lower right border is an additional, more honest imprint, 'in Venetia à S. Fosca'. Bifolco identifies this location as an engravers' shop associated with Scolari. (more details)

This the rare and influential 1531 Oronce Fine map of the world, portrayed using a double cordiform polar projection. This intricate woodcut map was both influential and - especially compared to other printed maps of its era - remarkably reflective of state-of-the-art cartographic detail. Rodney Shirley proclaimed it 'a rendering considerably in advance of any others printed earlier.' Many areas of significant interest are addressed in detail for the first time. The peninsular shape of Florida is clearly presented for the first time, and both Pineda and Cortez' mapping of the Gulf of Mexico are recorded here. This is the first printed map to refer to Magellan's voyage, naming a 'Mare Magellanicum' west of South America. The map breaks from Martin Waldseemüller's convention of presenting North America as separate from Asia: Fine's map incontrovertibly presents Labrador, Florida and the Gulf Coast as part of the Asian mainland; South America itself is depicted as taking the place of the Ptolemaic Great Promontory, or 'Dragon's Tail' that appeared on earlier maps like the 1507 Waldseemüller and the 1490 Martellus. Although including (but not naming) Magellan's strait, the map fails to account for the size of the ocean that circumnavigator revealed (despite naming that ocean - Mare Magellanicum.) (more details)

This is an attractive example of Petrus Apianus's 1520 map of the world, the earliest acquirable map to include the place name 'America.' In this respect it is pre-dated only by Waldseemüller's 1507 wall map, which exists in a sole surviving example held by the Library of Congress. Apianus was a well-respected and better-connected scholar, and in some respects his map's use of the name 'America' for the new world had broader impact even than the map on which the name first appeared. The map's projection and the lion's share of its geographical information derive from the 1507 Waldseemüller map of the world. In place of the hemisphere views present on the 1507 map, Apianus' displays in the upper decorative border an armillary sphere and a graticule, tools whose geometrical features allowed the composition of the map's projection. (more details)

A seminal 1821 (Daoguang 1) Qing Dynasty Chinese map of utmost importance and rarity, this is Huang Qianren's (黃千人, 1694–1771) grand and spacious map of the Great Qing Empire of China. Although ostensibly a map of China, the coverage of this map in fact extends to all lands touched by the influence Qing Empire, including England, Holland, Southeast Asia, and Africa. As such it can be considered a political manifesto lionizing the unity and majesty of Qing China as well as a functional administrative document. This edition of the map, 1821, was issued to memorialize the reign of the Jiaqing Emperor and celebrate the coming Daoguang reign. (more details)

A rare and extraordinary 1663 (Kangxi 2) xylographic map of Ming China, and indeed the entire world, by Wáng Jūnfǔ (王君甫) issued during the reign of the Kangxi Emperor (1661 – 1722). This massively proportioned map focuses on China, which, bounded on ... (more details)

A rare and extraordinary 1663 (Kangxi 2) xylographic map of Ming China, and indeed the entire world, by Wáng Jūnfǔ (王君甫) issued during the reign of the Kangxi Emperor (1661 – 1722). This massively proportioned map focuses on China, which, bounded on ... (more details)

This is a rare, important 1482 incunable edition of Pomponius Mela's Cosmographi Geographica or De situ orbis, the only full Latin text on geography to have survived the classical era. This 1482 edition is doubly important as the first geographical text to include a map, as opposed to an atlas. Moreover, it is the only map of the pre-1500 era to show evidence of the Portuguese voyages of discovery. (more details)

A seminal map. This is the first Japanese printed map to depict the world, including Europe and America, from a Buddhist cosmographical perspective. Printed by woodblock in 1710 (Hoei 7), this map was composed by the Buddhist monk Rokashi Hotan. Inspired ... (more details)

A rare, bold example of the only medieval mappamundi or World Map available to the collector. The anonymous woodcut first appeared in the 1491 Jean Dupré Lyons printing of the Mer des Hystoires. It is derived from the 1475 world map inWelteltchronik Rudimentum Novitiorum (World Chronicle for Novices), a history penned by an anonymous clergyman but published by Lucas Brandis. The book's world map and its map of the Holy Land were described by Shirley as 'the first printed maps to try and show land forms and countries in topographical relation to each other.' The Rudimentum Novitorum, was a history of the world intended for novice monks. Consequently the maps included were not for travel so much as supporting the symbolic and moral elements of monastic education. The 1475 map from which the present map is derived is itself only predated by one other printed map, the 1472 Isidorus T-O map, and in terms of orientation and general structure these maps do share some commonality, but the mappamundi as a form is very different in content and purpose to the schematic T-O map. At the same time, mappamundi such as this would stand in sharp contrast to the systematic, mathematical maps produced according to the rules and conventions of Ptolemy which would form the underpinning of modern geography. A T-O map was a visual diagram for understanding the three parts of the known inhabited world in relation to each other, but contained no information about those places. Ptolemy's maps represented an effort to calculate the actual locations of specific places in the inhabited world, or oikoumenē, and to mark them on a graph approximating a conic section of the globe. The mappamundi would attempt no such precision, but would within its limits name the parts of the known world deemed most important - particularly to the map's Christianized context. (more details)

A seminal map of extreme significance. This is the first Japanese printed map to depict the world, including Europe and America, from a Buddhist cosmographical perspective. Printed by woodblock in 1710 (Hoei 7), this map was composed by the Buddhist monk ... (more details)

This is a superb example of Heinrich Bünting's 1587 Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae, the first complete work of biblical geography. This 1587 edition is the first to contain its full complement of figured maps of the continents. Africa, Europa Regina, and Asia-as-a-Pegasus first appear in this edition. Along with the famous cloverleaf world map, Die ganze Welt in einem Kleberblat, it is largely these figural maps for which this work is today most admired. Thus, this is the most desirable form in which this influential and long-lived book appears. (more details)

A seminal map of extreme significance. This is the first Japanese printed map to depict the world, including Europe and America, from a Buddhist cosmographical perspective. Printed by woodblock in 1710 (Hoei 7), this map was composed by the Buddhist monk ... (more details)

This is Martin Waldseemüller's 1513 rendition of the Ptolemaic map of the world: 'Visually, it is one of the most attractive Ptolemaic world maps produced' (Shirley) and one of the earliest acquirable woodcut maps of the ancient world. It appeared in Waldseemüller and Ringmann's 1513 Geographie Opus Novissima, the most comprehensively edited and amended edition of Claudius Ptolemy's 2nd-century geography. Moreover, this map was the largest-format edition of Ptolemy's map produced to date. (more details)

A stunning large format wall map of the world in six panels issued in 1786 by Charles Desnos and Nicolas Jaugeon. Described by map historian Rodney W. Shirley as 'a veritable compendium of a map,' this is one of the most richly informative cartographic productions ever issued. The map consists of a double hemisphere map projection surrounded by no less than 60 Aeoli windheads, astronomical data on constellations, cosmic systems, and other charts - intentionally placing the world in the context of the greater cosmos. Its elegant presentation conveys confidence in the human capacity to describe not only the Earth, but the cosmos itself. The double hemisphere map rests upon Corinthian columns, underscoring the classical foundations of western scientific thought, here augmented by new discovery. The unique, neo-classical motif is carried through to the bottom half of the engraving, where panels of text are set within a portico supported by Corinthian columns. Completing the illusion are a coffered roof and a patterned tile floor. At the base of the columns there busts and accounts of the great explorers, among them Columbus, Magellan, and Vasco de Gama. (more details)

A fine first edition third printing example of Aberham Ortelius' iconic 1570 map of the world. This map is the first map of the world to appear in a standard atlas and is thus of fundamental importance to the history of cartography. Centered on the ... (more details)

One of the most distinctive early maps, this is the incunable map of the world accompanying Hartman Schedel's 1493 Liber Cronicarum or the 'Nuremberg Chronicle'. It is one of the few 15th-century printed maps available to the collector, but even among the earliest printed world maps, it is unique in its presentation and content. Published while Columbus sailed, this map captures the European world at the dawn of the Age of Discovery, just 40 years after the printing press. (more details)

One of the most spectacularly decorative maps of the 18th century, this is Henri Chatelain's magnificent 1719 map of the Americas and the Pacific. The map emerged on the cusp of a new age of global exploration wherein world-spanning trade routes offered Europeans unprecedented exposure to new cultures, peoples, and trade opportunities. It is no mistake that his map of America - as seen here, presents the continent as the center of a staggering array of trade networks reaching from Europe to America itself, the South Pacific, and Africa. (more details)

A stunning and influential work, possibly in its earliest edition, this large c. 1790 Japanese world map was issued by Nagakubo Sekisui, the premier Japanese geographer of the late 18th century. It is Nagakubo's interpretation of the 1602 'Matteo Ricci Map', the first map to integrate East Asian and European cartographic knowledge. It includes significant updates over the Ricci, most notably the addition of Australia and islands north of Japan (Hokkaido and the Kurils). (more details)

A superb example of a rare map, by Hendrik De Leth, presenting the reader with a compendium of European exploration and discovery. Not confined to the Pacific Ocean - as suggested by the title - the map includes richly detailed mapping of the Americas and coastal Africa as well as the Pacific, Southeast Asia, and Australia. Though it is clearly based in part on de Fer's map of 1713 and the 1719 Chatelain, this finely engraved map is easily the match of its predecessors for the elegance of its decorative vignettes. These include - along the bottom center of the map - scenes depicting the manner of turtle-hunting on Pacific Islands, the operation of a sugar mill, gold mining and bird hunting in Mexico, the manner of human sacrifice in mezo America, and a depiction of Cortez destroying Mexican idols. To the lower right is a magnificent scene of the Cape Town settlement, filled with ships and surrounded by a magnificent frame decorated with lions, monkeys, and native figures. (more details)

A beautiful, complete set of gores for the construction of Giovanni Maria Cassini's 1792 terrestrial and celestial globe pair, including the calottes and printed matter for the horizon and meridian rings. The gores are paired in four bordered sheets for each globe, plus two sheets containing each globe's calottes and labels for meridians. The set also includes the labels, printed to two sheets dated 1795, for the armillary sphere intended to accompany the globes. All are superbly engraved and beautifully colored, and are evocative artifacts of the world and its place in the universe as understood at the end of the eighteenth century. (more details)

This is Joachim Vadian's rare 1534 woodcut map of the world, combining a largely Ptolemaic formulation of Europe and Asia with what was a modern depiction of Africa and the New World. It is one of the earliest maps to name America. While largely derived from the map Sebastian Münster prepared for Simon Grynaeus in 1532, it is in many ways a better representation of Münster's source, the 1507 map of Martin Waldseemüller. (more details)

This is Willem Blaeu's magnificent map of the world, considered the epitome of the carte á figures and the gold standard for decorative cartography of the Dutch Golden Age. Despite being created in 1606, it was the centerpiece map for Blaeu's Atlas Novus for nearly twenty years starting in 1630. It represented the dominant European image of the world for the first part of the 17th century, and remains the sine qua non for collectors of world maps, and of Dutch cartography. (more details)

One of the most spectacularly decorative maps of the 18th century, this is Henri Chatelain's magnificent 1719 map of the Americas and the Pacific. This sumptuously engraved map is centered on the American continent, but extends west to include all of ... (more details)

One of the most spectacularly decorative maps of the 18th century, this is Henri Chatelain's magnificent 1719 map of the Americas and the Pacific. This sumptuously engraved map is centered on the American continent, but extends west to include all of ... (more details)

This is a beautiful, 6-map set of maps of the world and continents executed for 1588 and later editions of Sebastian Münster's magnum opus, Cosmographia Universalis, entitled in these later editions Cosmographey: das ist, Beschreibung Aller Länder, Herrschafften vnd fürnemesten Stetten des gantzen Erdbodens, sampt ihren Gelegenheiten, Eygenschafften, Religion, Gebräuchen, Geschichten vnd Handtierungen, [et]c. Beginning in 1544, this work would be the primary source of information for anyone who wished to know about the rest of the world: consequently its maps would have had a disproportionate impact, providing the first glimpse of remote and newly-discovered parts World to literate laypeople in Europe for more than half a century. (more details)

Rare. This is a c. 1700 Pieter Schenk map of the world in a double hemisphere projection. The map draws on a number of 17th century sources - the insular California and the tentative coastline of the Pacific Northwest derive from Sanson; the depiction of Abel Tazman's discoveries in Australia and the South Pacific resembles that of Blaeu and De Wit; there is considerable influence from Carel Allard's map of 1696 as well, particularly in the inclusion of the Great Lakes in North America, and a Hennepin-type Mississippi River with its outlet in the vicinity of Galveston Bay. The map includes the La Salle expedition Fort Prudhomme on the Mississippi, the first French settlement in what would become Tennessee. Unlike Allard's map (and Schenk's own 1706 world map), the present composition contains considerable decorative flourish. There are putti nestled in the cruxes of the two hemispheres: the southern one puffing a flowery wind, and the northern one brandishing a star, which may be the North Star. Above and below the cruxes of the main hemispheres are a pair of polar projections illustrating the parts of the globe least understood until well into the 19th century. (more details)

A striking example of Dutch Golden Age cartography, this is Pieter van de Keere's 1628 carte-á-figures map of the world on the Mercator projection surrounded by allegorical imagery. The cartography embraces many of the common misconceptions of the period, including general confusion regarding the cartography of North America, the polar regions, the interior of Africa, and East Asia. (more details)