Lot 1: WORLD - APIAN PETER (1495-1552)

Tipus Orbis Universalis Iuxta Ptolomei Cosmographi traditionem et Americi Vespucci [Vienna]:1520 [or later]. Double-page woodcut map of the world on a truncated cordiform projection, title set at upper margin, the map decorated with twelve windheads, wreaths at lower right and left with initials LA (Luca Atantses) who paid for the production, LF (Lorenz Fries), who assisted with the draughting, and JK (Johannes Camertius). (Some light browning along centre fold, lower margin shaved with the loss of the lower part of the word Meridies.)

AN IMPORTANT WORLD MAP, RECOGNISED AS THE EARLIEST'AVAILABLE'MAP TO SHOW THE NAME OF AMERICA. Peter Bienewitz (Apianus) was a Professor of Mathematics in Vienna, as well as a mapmaker and writer on Geography. He modelled his 1520 map on Waldseemüllers 1507 wall map. As was the trait at the time, the map was issued bound into an edition of Solinus's Polyhistor published in Vienna in 1520 and is also found bound into Mela's De Sita Orbis published in Basle, 1522. The map shows the influence of Lorenz Fries, of Strasbourg, a great follower on Waldesmüller, who together with Gr/uuninger, in the period 1520-25, republished and revised much of material left by the great geographer. Shirley 45; Van Ortroy 1; Harisse 126; Nordenskiold p.99

THE PLEASURE OF MAPS

Cartography is often considered to be art form in its own right and the story of maps is in many ways a reflection of changes in environmental peception and art history over the years. Maps are collected today as much for their aesthetic appeal as for their historical interest. Collections have, especially since the spread of various printing techniques in the early modern period, been formed by private individuals and institutions for various pruposes: to study the historical geography of a particular region, be it an English colony, a French province or a German dukedom; to research into the spread of settlement across the New World; or to investigate changing ideas about the shape of our world.

However, the idea of using the map as a means of embellishing one's own domestic surroundings is not new. As long ago as 1570, the Elizabethan mathematician and mystic Dr. John Dee described most aptly the reasons why people acquired maps:

"Some, to beautify their Halls, Parlors, Chambers, Galeries, Studies, or Libraries with, some other for their own journeys directing int o far lands, or to understand other men't travels, liketh, loveth, getterth, and useth, Maps, Charts, and Geographical globes..."

The gradually increasing awareness of the form and character of distant lands -- often never seen by the mapmakers themselves -- on such early maps is part of the history of discovery and exploration; their decorative qualities justifiably make them a branch of the history of art. Just as the design of maps developed with time, so did the style in which colouring was applied by hand. The distinctive palettes or combinations of colours, be they colour washes or mere outlines help us to interpret and embellish thr engraving beneath. Sometimes, hand colouring applied in recent times can mar such harmony and distort the information that colouring ws meant to show, such as political boundaries.

If a dozen collectors are asked why they collect or study old maps, they will very likely give a dozen different answeres, all of them perfectly justifiable. For example, the geographer Ptolemy of Alexandria, who flourished in the second century AD, considered the differing concerns of geography. Using the analogy of a portrait, he stated that geography deals with the description of the entire land, chorography with individual features such as the eyes or ears. If the maxim that Nature abhors a vacuum is accepted, then blank unchartered spaces on maps were not acceptable to the eye of the beholder. Early mapmakers such as Mercator and his contemporaries gave the public value for money in this sense. What better way, for instance, of balancing the lands surrounding the North Pole than by placing a vast continent in the Antipodes, centered upon the South Pole. Such imagination had to wait another two centuries to be verified as a cartographic fact, but in the meantime the mysterious Terra Incognita was to privide a rich source of ideas with which to fill and decorate maps. Of course, the mapmakers' creativity did not stop with imaginary continents. Like all good craftsmen, these early mapmakers took pride in their work, and often decorated their maps to improve their appearance.

However, I can be just as delighted by the appearance of a highly detailed multi-sheet topographical survey maps, such as the sheets of old Ordnance Surveys or the great eighteenth and early nineteenth-century European surveys which led the way to the modern topographical surveys familiar to us today, as by the beautifully designed and presented regional maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The present sale includes a broad spectrum of old maps from all parts of the world, covering a wide range of examples from the sixteenth century to fine maps issued three hundred years later. Quite a far cry, indeed, from my own early efforts when, as a small child, I would delight in copying maps of islands in the old family atlas onto scraps of paper. That same atlas is still in my collection more than fifty years later.
John Goss, 1st October 2006

WORLD MAPS

No VAT on hammer price or buyer's premium.