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AbeMaps - the antique map source
AbeMaps stands for Auction, Buy, Explore antique MAPS.
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Next auction May 17-24th
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Visit the online Map Shop. When no auction is active we offer a fine selection of maps available for immediate sale and no commission is charged.
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10,000 descriptions and HR images. Registered users can see for how much the item sold.
Select one of the regions below.
Or read about the following map subjects
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Check out antique maps, browse and zoom into 10,000+ high resolution images of the following regions and subjects
The auction results and estimated value are freely available for our registered users.
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Articles about mapping
We hope you enjoy the following readings. Please return often
as we ad articles on a regular base.
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Sea charts 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.
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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). Read more
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Master colourist" Dirk Jansz van Santen
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. Read more |

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The mapping of Japan 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.
Read more
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Tips for prospective map collectors . 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 Read more |
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Optical prints 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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Speculative bubbles - The First financial cricis.
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 |
V.O.C. Dutch East India Company 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. Read more |
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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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ZUDA ROKASHI (Priest Hotan) - Nansenbushu bankoku shoka no zu.[Outline Map of All Countries of the Universe]
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].
Read
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BLAEU, Willem Janszoon (1571-1638). Pascaarte van alle de
Zécuften van EUROPA.
Amsterdam, 1621 or later, but before 1650] Blaeu's chart greatly
influenced other Amsterdam publisher's. A striking feature of the
relatively small number of paintings that comprise the ouevre of
Johannes Vermeer is the prominent place accorded to maps and globes. The
use of maps as wall hangings in contemporary Dutch houses went beyond
the desire for cartographic information. Maps were also used to express
status, to promote a better understanding of history or politics or to
take the place of paintings. Interestingly, Johannes Vermeer used this
chart in his painting The geographer ( 1669) Städel Museum,
Frankfurt, Germany. Read more |
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