Search Results: British Isles from Bryars and Bryars

Amsterdam, c. 1750. Copper engraving, 52 x 59.5 cms, two engraved charts on one sheet, some spotting and foxing, black and white, blank verso. Van Keulen’s chart of the Thames Estuary and the Norfolk coast, around Yarmouth, appeared in various editions of Part II of the Zee-Fakkel. Sets of charts were sometimes made up for particular customers; Shirley describes an atlas of this kind, containing an example of our chart, which was specially arranged for navigation in British waters c. 1730. Koeman, Atlantes Neerlandici, Van Keulen #279 in, for example, Keu 75A; Shirley, Maps in the Atlases of the British Library, M.Keu-2k, M.Keu-2l. Map

Grimsby & London: Taylor & Francis, 1883. Sheet size 55.5 x 44 cm, map 46 x 36 cm, printed in colours, inset of fishing on the Seine, old ink stamp to upper margin, blank verso, laid on archival tissue, small area of marginal loss to left hand corners. Published in the ‘Piscatorial Atlas of the North Sea, English and George’s Channels’, a series of 50 lavishly chromolithographed charts record the distribution – spawning grounds and abundance – of the major edible species of fish, shellfish and crustacea caught in the North Sea and off the coasts of the British Isles. There are insets showing the fish themselves, and the vessels and gear used to catch them, with a table of detailed information covering time of spawning, number of eggs, when and how caught, bait and food, size and weight, ‘quality’, when in season and other remarks, the product of a decade or more of reports and correspondence with British fishermen. The atlas was published under a joint… Read More

Paris, 1654. Copper engraving, 37 x 48 cms, modern hand-colour, blank verso. Nicolas Sanson (1600-1667), founder of the Sanson dynasty of map-makers, is considered by many to be the father of the French school of cartography. He was a prolific and original map-maker, admired for the clarity and scientific accuracy of his maps. Map

Amsterdam, 1616. Copper engraving, 9.6 x 13.4 cms, recent hand-colour, Latin text on verso. Map

Amsterdam, 1607. Copper engraving, 13.7 x 18.2 cms, black and white, numbered in an early hand in upper margin, Latin text on verso. Engraved by Jodocus Hondius for the ‘Atlas Minor’. Koeman Me 186. Map

Amsterdam, Henricus Hondius II, 1623. Copper engraving, 36.5 x 47, modern hand-colour, closed centrefold split, one or two marginal nicks and tears, Latin text on verso. The southwestern sheet of Mercator’s five regional maps of England and Wales; Janssonius revised the decorative elements in the 1630s, but the series was superseded by the British volume of the Atlas Novus in the 1640s. The Hondius-Janssonius map publishing business traced its roots back to Gerardus Mercator. Mercator coined the term ‘atlas’ (after the wise, mythical, Mauritanian king rather than the weary titan) and the original Mercator Atlas (published in parts between 1585 and 1595) was an enormous advance in scientific terms: like Abraham Ortelius, Mercator edited his maps from the best available sources, but he advanced a step further and mapped the world on a standard projection. However, the Atlas was not an immediate commercial success; the copper printing plates were purchased by Jodocus Hondius c. 1604, and… Read More

Amsterdam, 1623. Copper engraving, 35.5 x 47.5, recent hand-colour, closed centrefold split, Latin text on verso. Map

Amsterdam, 1649. Copper engraving, 39 x 49.5 cms, recent hand-colour, light spotting, French text on verso. Map

Antwerp, Plantin-Moretus, 1595. Copper engraving, 37 x 50 cms, black and white, small hole at centrefold, Latin text to verso. Shirley notes that the map is a general improvement on the previous Mercator-Ortelius outline, and draws attention to a detail which vividly suggests the personal involvement of the map-maker, Welsh antiquary Humphrey Lluyd: “the Caernarvon peninsula near Lluyd’s home town of Denbigh is badly distorted but it has been suggested very reasonably that this may have been due to Lluyd’s attempt to sketch this in by eye from the nearby mountains”. Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum is generally considered the first modern atlas of the world, originally published in 1570. Ortelius gathered and selected the best available cartographic knowledge and presented it in a single volume, duly credited and finely engraved in a consistent style, with explanatory text. The Theatrum was very decorative and hugely popular amongst the wealthy and educated, running into… Read More

Antwerp,, 1584. Copper engraving, 34.5 x 49.5 cm, modern hand-colour, centrefold reinforced on verso, several neat marginal restorations, Latin text on verso. The British Isles, aligned with west at the top of the map and north on the right, which makes better use of the available space on the page; it was chiefly derived from Mercator’s map of 1564. Abraham Ortelius's ‘Theatrum Orbis Terrarum’ is widely considered the first modern world atlas, originally published in 1570. Ortelius gathered and selected the maps which he believed represented the best available cartographic knowledge of his day, which he then presented it in a single volume, duly credited and finely engraved in a consistent style, with explanatory text. The Theatrum was highly decorative and hugely popular amongst the wealthy and educated, running into over forty editions in Latin and other major European languages. Shirley, British Isles, 139 (but cf. 86).Van den Broecke 16. Map

Liverpool, 1974. Pictorial map of Liverpool, sheet size 46 x 40.5 cm, printed in tones of green on green paper, blank verso; folding into a souvenir record-sleeve style pack (one or two small creases, laminate not extending fully to the top and right hand edges) which comprises: ‘Nothing to get hung up about’, a 30 page short history of the Beatles by Mike Evans; a discography (slightly creased); three posters (timeline, tours and an image of the band with long hair); a bookmark, 4 black and white postcards and an official Beatles Fan Club letter. By 1974 the band had broken up, but on our map they are locked in 1968 - in the style of the animated film ‘Yellow Submarine’: Old Fred makes a guest appearance, hand in hand with the Chief Blue Meanie, and the Yellow Submarine itself bobs on the Mersey. The driving force behind the creation of the map was Ron Jones, then Deputy PR Officer for Liverpool City Council, who recalled that ‘it was impossible for a visitor to Liverpool to… Read More

Manchester, Bradshaw &: Blacklock, 1845. Engraved folding map, 112.5 x 86.5 cm, dissected into 30 panels and laid on linen, original hand colour, some light staining and discolouration, edged in red silk, folding into brown cloth covers, rebacked, worn Bradford bookseller’s ticket to front pastedown. The colour denotes county boundaries and railways built and under construction. The map was published in October 1845 as Railway Mania neared its peak: in 1846 272 Acts of Parliament setting up new railway companies were passed, with the proposed routes totaling 9,500 miles, a third of which were never built. Bradshaw’s railway maps and timetables (in both cases the first national examples of their kind, where railways were the main focus) had been published since 1839. Bradshaw’s Railway Gazette appeared weekly from July 1845, giving updates to train services and advertising other publications such as this map. Map

Leiden, 1707. Copper engraving, 14 x 17 cm, black and white as issued, blank verso; miniature map of the British Isles oriented with East at the top published in James Beeverell’s ‘Les Delices de la Grand Bretagne et de l’Irland’, reissued in 1712 and 1727 (see Shirley, Maps of the British Isles 1650-1750, p. 17). Map

Edinburgh, c. 1814. Copper engraving, approx 52.5 x 64.5 cms, engraved by John and George Menzies, original hand-colour, light toning, short centrefold split, blank verso. John Thomson made his fortune through his extremely successful 'New General Atlas', but in the 1820s he bankrupted himself, twice (in the process of creating his large-scale 'Atlas of Scotland') and he disappears from the historical record. Thomson's maps are characteristic of the Edinburgh school of cartography which flourished at the beginning of the nineteenth-century and is noted for its clarity and elegance; other exponents include John Cary and John Pinkerton. Map

Amsterdam, 1636. 32.5 x 43.5 cms. From the scarce English-text edition, with distinctive original English colour. Small hole to the left of the upper centrefold, very light waterstaining and light creasing. English text to verso.Koeman Me 41A Map

Amsterdam, c. 1650. 41.5 x 52 cms.Original colour. Slight offsetting, and a couple of small marginal wormholes. French text to verso. Map

London: Basset & Chiswell, 1676. Copper engraving, 38.5 x 51 cms, modern hand-colour, four maps on one sheet, English text to verso. Islands around the British coast were often grouped, in various cominations, by early mapmakers. John Speed (1552-1629) is unquestionably the most significant English map-maker of the seventeenth-century. A brief note, from Granger’s Bibliographical History of England (1779) contains most of the information we have about Speed’s life: “John Speed, who was bred a Tailor, was by the generosity of Sir Fulk Grevil, his patron, set free from a manual employment and enabled to pursue his studies, to which he was strongly inclined by the bent of his genius. The fruits of them were his Theatre of Great Britain, containing an entire set of maps of the counties drawn by himself, his History of Great Britain, richly adorned with seals, coins & medals, from the Cotton collection; and his Genealogies of Scripture, first bound up with the Bible, in 1611 which… Read More

Amsterdam, 1618. Copper engraving, 9.8 x 13.6 cm, black and white, light marginal waterstaining and worm hole in lower margin, French text on verso. Miniature map of Wales, following Mercator’s version of the map by Welsh antiquary Humphrey Lluyd; when first published by Ortelius in the 1570s it was the earliest printed map to show Wales as a separate region. Our example was published in the French text edition of Tabularum geographicarum contractarum libri, a geographical work which is normally catalogued under the name of its author, Pieter Bert or Bertius. The maps are generally reduced from the cartography in the folio Mercator-Hondius atlas, and were mostly engraved by Jodocus Hondius, eldest son of the printer, who also bears the same name - although Shirley suggests the British maps may have been engraved by Salomon Rogiers (see Shirley, Early Printed Maps of the British Isles, 347). Geoffrey King calls them "undoubtedly the finest set of miniature maps ever printed" (Miniature… Read More

Paris, c. 1753. Copper engraved sea chart, 56 x 90 cms, with inset of the Thames Estuary, showing sandbars, soundings and coastline; right and left hand margins close, blank verso. This is a revised version of a chart which first appeared in the pioneering ‘Neptune François’, published by Jaillot in 1693. The revisions took place under the direction of Jacques Nicolas Bellin the elder (1703-1772) immediately prior to the outbreak of the Seven Years' War. Bellin was the first chief hydrographic engineer of the "Dépôt des cartes, plans et journaux du Ministère de la Marine," charged by Louis XIV with mapping the coasts of France first and then the rest of the world. He was highly regarded on both sides of the Channel; he was a member of the Royal Society of London. Map

Paris, Paul André: Basset, 1824. Copper engraving, 79.5 x 55 cm, original hand colour in outline, dissected into 36 panels and laid on linen, folding into slipcase, which has split along one edge and repaired with linen; title ‘England’ inked to slipcase and verso of the map. Hérisson (1759-1816) was a pupil of Rigobert Bonne, active from the late 1770s, who seems to have been most prolific as a map-maker during the First Empire; many of his maps continued to be reissued posthumously, as here. Map