Rare and striking example, in vibrant original color, of one of the earliest printed maps to name Armenia and to focus on the Caucasus and Georgia regions. The map was prepared by Dominus Nicolaus Germanus, a Benedictine monk from Saxony. He was also the author of several manuscript copies of... More
A beautiful example of a map of the region east of the Caspian Sea in the rare first issue of Mercator’s definitive edition of Ptolemy’s geography. A Silk Road caravan illustrates the southeast portion of the map, while sheep and cattle herders are depicted in the northeast section of it..... More
The rare first issue of this very attractive map of southern Russia from Mercator’s definitive edition of Ptolemy’s geography. Meeting in this map are two of the most important figures in the history of geography. Geographic data and mapmaking instructions left by the Alexandrian, Claudius Ptolemy (fl. A.D. 127-180), became..... More
First edition of this very attractive map, engraved by Gerard Mercator himself, of the ancient geography of Eastern Europe. This region was known in the Roman period as Sarmatia Europae, and it represented the limit of the Roman world’s accurate knowledge of geography to the northeast. The map is particularly..... More
An attractive example of one of the earliest maps of Russia to be both engraved and published in England. Its geography, like that of most of Blome’s maps, was based on the work of the French cartographer, Nicolas Sanson. The dedication to Thomas Crew, the Second Baron Crew of Northamptonshire..... More
An attractively engraved and richly detailed map of the southern part of Imperial Muscovy. The map details the subordinate duchies of the empire, including the Ukraine, the Don Cossacks and the Muscovite Tatars. “Polish Russia,” Lithuania, and the Duchy of Novgorod also appear. More
Beautiful example of the finely engraved Italian edition of this landmark map focusing on the northwest American coast and northern Pacific. The first edition of the map introduced some of the most influential cartographic fictions relating to this region: the so-called the Sea of the West and a complete Northwest... More
A scarce, attractively engraved map focusing on northeastern Russia and including part of Alaska. It appeared in M. Marbault’s Essai sur le commerce de Russie…, which is an account of Russian trade as well as a history of Russian explorations in the areas depicted on the map. Some of the..... More
A rare battle plan, based on a Russian map, outlining troop positions and movements in the southern Ukraine and the Crimea during the Russo-Turkish War of 1735 to 1739. It was fought in large part to enable Russia to have access to the Black Sea by controlling the Sea of... More
An archive that sheds light on the life of an extraordinary woman, known on the stage as Ionia the Enchantress, and on the tangled process of disposing of property in Russia in the fraught years of the Russian Revolution. Many of the documents relate to the sale of estates in..... More
This rare and finely engraved work, the first of St. Petersburg in printed form, was likely based directly on a drawing furnished directly to De Fer by Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blonde, the Frenchman who supervised the building of the city from 1716 to 1719. Published while construction of the city... More