Catalogues

A new catalogue focusing on celestial cartography, a selection of items that show how humans have charted the heavens and marked time by the light of the stars for over 500 years.

We are delighted to present our latest catalogue: Hollar — comprising a single-owner collection of works by the master etcher: from maps, topographical views, and architectural drawings, to portraits, records of the latest fashion, and studies of animals.

Our latest catalogue in Chinese: 东游记 — Journey to the East; exploring the attempts of the English, Dutch, and French, to dominate and control the lucrative Spice Trade.

A new catalogue focusing on London, including a selection of Frost Fair prints, large-scale plans of London boroughs, and the first printed depiction of Elizabeth I as queen.

Popular from the end of the seventeenth century in London and Paris, trade cards performed the dual functions of advertisements and maps, directing the public to the merchants’ stores – often with rambling descriptions to help locate the business in an era where formal street address numbers were rare. Trade cards were sufficiently small so that they could be carried in the gentleman’s pocket or lady’s purse.

Ten years in the making, this collection of cartographic ephemera — including advertisements, catalogues, manuscript correspondence, portraits, price lists, and trade cards — physically illustrates the struggles, exchanges and e orts of some of the leading gures of the map trade over the past five centuries.

The world’s obsession with discovering the exotic source of cinnamon and other elusive spices grew throughout the Roman era and into the medieval period, defining what it meant to be wealthy and powerful. From India to Europe the trade had a profound social, emotional and economic impact; giving rise to some of the first truly international trade routes, and shaping the structure of the world economy in a way that can still be felt today.

An online catalogue containing maps of the region from Ptolemy to Cook.

A magnificent portolan atlas by Battista Agnese in its original binding, inscribed and attributed to Agnese by the eminent bibliographer Henry Harisse.

An unique, 20 volume monumental grand composite atlas in magnificent condition, compiled by Pierre Jean le Mire (d1753), Canon of the Collegiate Church of Saint Vincent de Soignies in Hainaut.

The globes within these pages are far more than guides to geography and astronomy; they offer a glimpse into history. Observe how land, sea and stars shift over the course of 500 years, as human endeavour and ingenuity gradually uncovered more about the world around us.