When reading maps, we expect map makers to use standard conventions, especially in regard to projection, orientation, scale, and symbols. When a map maker does not use generally-accepted practices, we ask why? What is the story the map maker is trying to tell?
The Leo Belgius and the Pegasus map by Bünting are likely the most welknown cartographic curiosities. The auction samples a few items.
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Willem Janszoon Blaeu

(1571-1638) founded one of history's greatest cartographic publishing firms in 1599.The Blaeu family has its origin in the island of Wieringen, where about 1490, Willem Jacobsz., alias Blauwe Willem the grandfather of Willem Jansz. Blaeu was born. From the marriage of Willem Jacobsz. and Anna Jansd. sprang six children. The sond son, Jan Willemsz. (1527- before 1589) was the father of Willem Jansz Blaeu, who continued the family tradition by practising the trade of herring packer. In his second marrariage with Stijntge. Willem Jansz Blaeu was born in 1571.
Blaeu moved in 1598/9 from Alkmaar to Amsterdam and set up a shop selling globes, seaman's instruments and maps. In 1605 he moved to the nowadays called Damrak, where most of the Amsterdam booksellers and mapmakers were established at that time. The house was called 'In de Vergulde Sonnewyser' (In the gilt sundail). By 1608, he had already published a fine world map and a popular marine atlas. His early works include a globe from 1599, and maps of European countries and a world map in 1604-1608.
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Many antique maps were hand-coloured, but some were intended not to be. The richness of early colouring is difficult to duplicate in the present. Maps with original colouring, called contemporary colour, are quite desirable to find. Modern colouring is sometimes applied, but many collectors insist that a map should remain in its original state.
Colouring varies with old maps. When they were produced some maps were fully coloured at the time, some were partly coloured, some were coloured in outline, and many not coloured at all.
Maps were originally coloured to enhance appearance and readability. Generally three or four colours (green, pink, orange and yellow) distinguished political subdivisions, black was used for names, red coloured cathedrals or other buildings distinguish large cities and blue stands for water.
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Before the Little Ice Age, Norwegian Vikings sailed as far north and west as Ellesmere Island, Skraeling Island and Ruin Island for hunting expeditions and trading with the Inuit groups who already inhabited the region. Between the end of the 15th century and the 20th century, colonial powers from Europe dispatched explorers in an attempt to discover a commercial sea route north and west around North America. The Northwest Passage represented a new route to the established trading nations of Asia, as in 1493 to defuse trade disputes, Pope Alexander VI split the discovered world in two between Spain and Portugal; thus France, the Netherlands, and England were left without a sea route to Asia, either via Africa or South America,[12] unless their ships defied the ban and explored such waters regardless; which they did, and the ban became unenforceable. England called the hypothetical northern route the "Northwest Passage". The desire to establish such a route motivated much of the European exploration of both coasts of North America.
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The first cartographic images of territory of Poland have appeared in Antique time (2nd age). From then, all development of Poland cartography can be divided into stages: low accuracy (until the first half of the 16th century); general cartography (the second half of 16th century; first half of the 18th century); professional topography, modern topography, thematic cartography, modern cartography. Each period has its own characteristics in terms of repre- sentation methods, level of detail and accuracy. The first geographical data about the territory of Poland are found in the works of Ancient Greeks and Romans. In the third book of the "Geographical Guide" by Claudius Ptolemy there is a descrip- tion of the Baltic area.
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One of the most dramatic events in the early history of commercial cartography in Amsterdam was the sale in 1929 of circa 40 Jocodus Hondius Jr. copperplates by his widow to Willem Jansz. Blaeu, the most important competitor of the Hondius-Janssonius firm.
Blaeu replaced Jodocus Hondius Jr's name with his own on the plates and the following year, had published them together with his own maps. His brother Henricus Hondius, angry at the sale of plates to their competitor, engaged engravers to cut similar plates or better and finer and who shoot be ready within eighteen months.
Above all these Jodocus Hondius Jr. plates mark the new engraving style and format and hereby setting the new trend in Amsterdam atlas production.
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Sea charts, whether printed or in manuscript form, often have a romantic appeal far stronger than that of land maps. The romance of the seaman's intrepid voyages through uncharted waters can often be sensed when examining a chart.

Before the development of printing there was an active chart making industry based around the Mediterranean in places like Genoa, Venice and Majorca. From such centers manuscript 'rutters' and 'portolans' were produced for the Mediterranean and Southern European Atlantic coasts. Throughout the sixteenth century the manuscript portolan, in single sheet or atlas form, was the only relatively accurate source of navigating information. Read more

Soil maps

There is something about soil maps from the early twentieth century. Their colors seem more vivid than those of modern maps. Even their legends are more interesting: Soil maps were primarily created to delineate the soils of the state, they show much more than that: They offer a glimpse of the transportation infrastructure (steam and electric railroads, trails, ferry landings), landscape features that may not be visible today (salt marshes, swamps, tidal flats, escarpments, rock outcrops), and geology (stony and gravelly areas, quarries).
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In the seventeenth century, the Netherlands held a prominent position in Europe in the production of books, maps and prints.
Not only were the number, diversity and quality of printed works renown, but also the "versiering" - the application of decorative graphic elements in the colouring of maps, prints, title pages, opening and closing vignettes, etc. Little is known about the many print and map colourists, the 'const- en caertafzetters', who lived in the Netherlands at the time. Since their work was usually not signed, they have remained anonymous'. The most important exception to this rule is Dirk Jansz van Santen.
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The Japanese cherish a great love for maps. Of old they adorned all kinds of objects with cartographic images of the world, of Japan, of their town or province. Before the Japanese came into direct contact with Europeans, they made maps that represented the Buddhist world. In that world there were only three great cultures, i.e. India, China, and Japan.
After the arrival of the Europeans, the Japanese realized that a much larger world existed outside of India, China, and Japan. The world maps created by the Flemish and Dutch cartographers like Abraham Ortelius, Gerard Mercator, Petrus Plancius, Willem Blaeu that the Dutch brought with them revealed what the unknown world looked like.
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This page offers information on the different aspects of Map collection.
Types of Collections - Factors Affecting Map value - How Condition Affects Value - Map Colouring - How to Detect Reproductions - Storage - Reference Materials - Storage - Custom Framing.
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Little has heen published (particularly in English) on the type of print known as the perspective view, intended for use in an optical diagonal machine. Nevertheless these prints were highly popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and still appear regularly on the art market. lt therefore seems worth collecting what information is known and adding what I have heen able to discover.
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Speculation in shares was known as the Bubble, and the trade was known as "Wind-Handel" and "Wind-Negotie," (both meaning Wind-Trade), because of the trader often didn't own the shares and also tried to talk up the price. Dutch companies formed in the Bubble tended to be local affairs, associated with the cities where they were founded. Stock offerings were often public in name only, with local officials and other insiders buying up most or all of the stock.
It couldn't last, of course. There was no real regulation, and instead there was some government connivance.
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Trading compagnies

It was to be the end of the 17th century or even the beginning of the 18th before all the West European maritime powers were represented by companies on the new trade routes to the Far East, to which the then all-embracing term East Indies was applied. The East Indies comprised all the new discovered regions east of the Cape of Good Hope, which included: East Africa and the islands along its coast, the basin of the Red Sea, India west and east, the Malay Archipelago, China and Japan. The increase in the number of contestants in the new mercantile traffic between Europe and Asia made for a new equilibrium and redistributed the world into new spheres of influence.
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Europeans, realized early on that beads were important to Native Americans. The Dutch West India Company (W.I.C.) used the beads for trading with natives in America and Africa. Corporations such as the Hudson Bay Company and individuals such as Stephen A. Frost> developed lucrative bead-trading markets with the Indians. Contemporary prints exist of Indians wearing these beads. Also the East India Company (V.O.C.) must have used them for trade as Dutch Trade beads are also found also in Polynesia.
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The medieval Book of Hours evolved out of the monastic cycle of prayer which divided the day into eight segments, or "hours": Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, Nones, Compline, and Vespers. By the early fifteenth century, the format of the Book of Hours had developed to satisfy the demands of private, as opposed to communal, devotion. These portable books are smaller in format than their monastic forebears, designed for use by individuals, with a liturgical system somewhat less complicated than monastic liturgy and more "user-friendly."

An illuminated manuscript is a book written and decorated by hand. Its name is derived from the Latin manus meaning hand and "scriptus" meaning writing. Manuscripts which were decorated with gold, silver or bright paint are called illuminated, from the Latin "illuminare" meaning to lighten or brighten up.
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Published in Kyoto, 1710 (Hoei 7 = Year of the Tiger) by Bundaiken Uhei (fl. 1680 - 1720).
This map is a great example for Japanese world maps representing Buddhist cosmology with real world cartography. It is the earliest one and - therefore - the prototype for Buddhist world maps. The map centred on 'Jambu-Dvipa', the mythological heart of Buddhist cosmography where Buddha was born in Northern India with the sacred lake of Anavatapta, and the four sacred rivers Ganges, Oxus, Indus, and Tarim flowing from it, the map extending from Ceylon to Siberia, and from Japan to the British Isles 'Country of the Western Woman', with Europe as a group of islands, Africa figured as a small island, and a land bridge connecting China with an unnamed continent to the East [America].
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Nüremberg Chronicle

The Liber Chronicarum or the Nuremberg Chronicle, as it is also known, is a history of the world from creation to 1493The Liber Chronicarum or the Nuremberg Chronicle, as it is also known, is a history of the world from creation to 1493. The Liber Chronicarum was commissioned by two wealthy Nuremberg merchants and brothers in law, Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kammermaister. They contracted Michael Wohlgemut (1434-1519) and his stepson Wilhelm Pleydenwurff (c.1460-1494) to make the woodcuts for the book and to draw up layouts showing the setting of the type and the placement of the woodcuts. The text was supplied by Hartman Schedel (1440-1514), a physician and humanist scholar.
Perhaps the most important features of the Liber Chronicarum are its design and illustrations.
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