(Set of world and continents) Planiglobii Terrestris cum Utroq Hemisphaerio...

Planiglobii Terrestris cum Utroq Hemisphaerio .. - A large decorative double hemisphere world map including four polar spheres, each of a different projection. Two interesting diagrams depict the earth, as it would be seen from space. North America is still blank above California, and Hudson Bay is open-ended in the northwest corner. In Oceania there are partial coastlines of New Zealand and Australia. Two very large, decorative cartouches contain the titles, one in Latin, the other French. The Latin cartouche features mythical sea creatures and the other is surrounded fruit and animals representing the bounty of the earth.

Americae Mappa generalis... A richly ornamented map of North and South America. The title cartouche of bottom left shows natives, flora and fauna, and volcanoes erupting.
This edition shows a corrected Western Coastline, with California no longer shown as an island. Good detail throughout the map, especially in the southwest and near the Great Lakes, which were then actively being explored by the French fur traders and Hudson's Bay Company.
The Mississippi River shows the results of the early French Jesuit explorations, with its sources extending far North of the limits of the maps produced 20 and 30 years earlier, although Le Moyne's mythical lake in the South-eastern US remains. The coastline of western Europe and Africa can be seen

Europa... The map is dated 1743, and shows all of Europe up to Asia Minor and Russian Tartary, and the northern tip of Africa. Lovely decorative cartouche top left corner

Asiae... map dated 1744. Attractive map of the continent featuring two decorative cartouches in diagonally opposite corners of the map.

Africa... A large and imposing map of the continent, with a large decorative cartouche featuring European merchants and local dignitaries talking trade, while in the foreground, and background is filled with local wild animals.

- Following the long period of Dutch domination, the Homann family became the most important map publishers in Germany in the eighteenth century, the business being founded by J. B. Homann in Nuremberg about the year 1702. Soon after publishing his first atlas in 1707 he became a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and, in 1715, he was appointed Geographer to the Emperor. After the founder's death in 1724, the firm was continued under the direction of his son until 1730 and was then bequeathed to his heirs on condition that it traded under the name of Homann Heirs. In fact, the firm remained in being until the next century and had a wide influence on map publishing in Germany.