A propos de cet article
First Gerard van Keulen edition. Amsterdam: By Gerard van Keulen, 1705-1706[-1709]. Two volumes. Folio (24 1/2" x 15", 622mm x 382mm). Vol. I: folding letterpress Dutch title-page in red and black, privilege, blank, 2pp. letterpress French title, blank. With a hand-colored engraved frontispiece-imprint heightened in gilt and 84 (numbered in manuscript 2-3, 6-8, 10-88) hand-colored engraved folding plates. Vol. II: with a hand-colored engraved frontispiece-imprint heightened in gilt and 79 (numbered in manuscript 1-79) hand-colored engraved folding plates. With 2 hand-colored engraved frontispiece-imprints heightened in gilt, and 163 hand-colored engraved folding plates. Bound in contemporary mottled calf (re-backed with the back-strip laid down). On the boards, two panels bordered by gilt rolls. The inner border has at its outer corners armillary spheres gilt. In the center, Atlas supporting an armillary sphere on his shoulders gilt, surrounded by gilt scrollwork. On the spine, eight raised bands. In the panels, armillary spheres. Title gilt to the second panel, number gilt to the third. All edges of the text-block speckled red. Re-backed, with the back-strip laid down. Front boards splayed (vol. I: ca. 85mm split to the calf). Scuffs and some patches of wear (vol. II: wear to the edges of the front board). Internally, considerable pigment burn (II:21 repairs) and browning of green pigment. Tears to two plates (I:70, II:13). Ink manuscript in an early hand translating the titles of most plates into French. Slips reinforcing the lower edges of the stubs of I:6 with ink manuscript notes, calculations and sketches in an early hand. On the verso of the frontispiece of vol. II, a pencil table (with two entries) titled "Table des Cartes contenues dans ce volume" An exceptionally well-preserved, essentially unsophisticated set. Joannes van Keulen (1654-1715) established in 1679 the firm "de Gekroonde Lootsman", the Crowned Pilot. Mapmaking continued by that firm and family for 200 years; it was one of the great publishing dynasties of Europe. Van Keulen had been augmenting the available stock of charts (and other sorts of atlantean plates: celestial maps, tables of flags, images of ships, coastal views) for 25 years when his son, Gerard, took over the firm. The bookselling innovation of the van Keulen atlases was the offer of an essentially custom collection; one could cobble together what one wanted and could afford. There were over 460 van Keulen charts from which to choose; the largest complement ever found in a single atlas is 185. The present copy boasts 163, the most of any copy in auction records. One plate (I:7) is not listed in Koeman as belonging to any other copy: a French-Dutch table of the world's flags signed by Cornelis Danckerts. The presence of that plate points towards the French ownership of the volume. The insertion of the French title-page is recorded by Koeman in concert with a Dutch title-page (dated 1708), but the combination in the present copy is unrecorded. The numeration and the French titling, the stub-slips (I:6) and the pencil table (II:frontispiece verso) are all in different hands. What the layers of annotation indicate is the engagement the owners and users of the volumes. The first stub-slip queries the angle of the sun and its shadows on the verso; the recto has part of a carefully dotted circle and calculations of degrees. Clearly this was a scrap from the notebook of a French navigator. The Dutch color-expert Dr. Truusje Goedings has written of the present copy that the "volumes have been coloured in the same style but probably not by the same hand. . . With its lavishly gilt title-prints, full colouring of the maps and gilt leather bindings this copy most probably was a de-luxe copy as offered by Van Keulen". Koeman IV: Keu 20B (110 plates overlap) Keu 24 (Dutch title-page, not noting the printing in black-and-red), Keu 25 (French title-page), Keu 28 (135 plates overlap, 1708-9).
N° de réf. du vendeur 6JLR0155
Contacter le vendeur
Signaler cet article
