The End of the Edo Period: Growing Curiosity in Japan

For roughly 250 years Japan was subject to one ruling family. The Tokugawa family was known for imposing rigid social orders and strict isolationism from foreign contact and trade. The little contact they had with Europeans from 1603-1868 came from Dejima, a small man-made island in Nagasaki's harbor. This island was home to the Dutch East India Company. Any other Europeans that docked in a Japanese port during the Edo period would be put to death without a trial. The complete isolationism nurtured a boom in Japanese culture. Art, entertainment, and fashion became points of interest among urban populations. Around the early 1800's European intrusions were on the rise. To understand these new "barbarians", Rangaku (Dutch studies) became important to the Japanese in understanding and defeating the foreign enemies. Growing interest in the west only increased after a peasant uprising in 1830 forced the Japanese to acknowledge the growing issues within their country. As more citizens looked to the West for answers, Japanese officials tightened their anti-foreigner policy once again. This only caused more unrest amongst the people and invited in more westerners trying to establish trade relations.

This map completed in 1850 is a prime example of the increasing interest the Japanese were developing in the West. This world map displays a fusion of the artistic culture that had blossomed in the Edo period and the desire to understand how the rest of the world functioned and interacted with each other. Instead of focusing solely on Japan's towns and provinces, the mapmaker indicates the value of trading internationally while stylistically holding on to Japanese traditions. Many maps made in this era disregard geographical accuracy, believing that this was inevitable. In comparison to European made maps from nearly a century prior, the level of accuracy is years advanced.

 Japan began reluctantly opening its borders to American traders. This hurt Japan's economy but opened up the country to Western culture. By 1859, western texts and literature were being translated by the government and western military schools led by the Dutch were allowed. Japan ushered in a new era in 1868 when the final Tokugawa resigned and all Japanese borders were opened. Maps from this point on take on a very distinctly European look and cartographers begin paying close attention to the accuracy of their pieces.

This map from 1850 is a rare piece representing a time in which Japan was on the brink of a major cultural change. It retains the Edo period's style and execution while acknowledging Japan's place in the booming world trade markets.

In addition to this historical map, Arader Galleries also offers a selection of Japanese works from this era on a variety of subjects including: whaling, botanicals, livestock, and commerce. For more information, please contact Arader Galleries.

Today in History: August 8th

 British naval officer Joseph Whidbey led an expedition to search for the Northwest Passage near Juneau, Alaska as part of Captain Vancouver’s expedition of the American Pacific Northwest.

A veteran of the American war for Independence, Whidbey was given a peacetime appointment aboard the HMS Europa, where he conducted detailed surveys of Port Royal with then-Lieutenant Vancouver. Once his berth was completed, he was commissioned to the HMS Discovery along with Vancouver.

George Vancouver was born in King's Lynn, Norfolk, England on June 22, 1757. He began his naval career aboard the HMS Resolution, captained by James Cook. Upon completion of two voyages with Captain Cook, Vancouver was commissioned as a Lieutenant aboard the HMS Martin surveying coast lines. It is this work that would set him apart from his peers. Following the Nootka Crisis - which resulted in skirmishes between the Spanish and the English as both tried to assert their authority over the territory - Captain Vancouver was given command of the Discovery and the Chatham and charged with the task of surveying the Pacific Northwest coastline.

The mission was time-consuming as the ships Discovery and the Chatham were too cumbersome to fit into the lithe channels and inlets along the coastline; instead, small boats were sent in every direction to examine the coast in detail. The Vancouver Voyage lasted four-and-a-half years, circumnavigating the globe, landing in five continents and had a great and lasting affect on the indigenous people it encountered as well as encouraging colonization of the Americas.

 

Captain George Vancouver’s maps were so great in detail that they were used as the key reference in coastal navigation for generations to come. In addition to his contributions to navigational records of the Pacific Northwest, he also contributed many surveys of Australia, Galapagos Islands, Sandwich Islands, Mexico, and Chile.

To recognize Whidbey’s outstanding service, Captain Vancouver named the island that forms the northern boundary of Puget Sound -incidentally named for another navel officer on the Vancouver expedition - Whidbey Island.

 Arader Galleries is proud to offer you a fine selection of Vancouver Expedition survey maps. Please contact the Gallery for more information.

Extraordinary Wall Map of the Americas

Aaron Arrowsmith’s “Map of America” (1804) is one of the rarest and most significant maps he ever produced. An acclaimed British cartographer, Aaron Arrowsmith drafted accurate, detailed charts that earned him the titles of Hydrographer to the King of England and Geographer to the Prince of Wales, extremely important distinctions during an era when Britain ruled the seas. One of the first great British cartographers of North America, Arrowsmith introduced a new standard of excellence in mapmaking in the late eighteenth century and almost single-handedly made London the center for the cartographic trade. Arrowsmith built his great success on his ability to attract both commercial and general viewers through his combination of visual and scientific appeal.

This extraordinary wall map, engraved onto 4 sheets, depicts North and South America. It also shows the oceans that stretch between the Sandwich (Hawaii) and Cape Verdes Islands. Responding to the public’s demand for up-to-date maps of the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase, Arrowsmith drew on a number of sources in order to create his much heralded “Map of America.” Building on his earlier map of North America, “A Map Exhibiting all the New Discoveries in the Interior Parts of North America” (1795), Arrowsmith made use of the accounts of Cook, Vancouver, Mears, and La Perouse in order to create his updated 1804 wall chart. Though Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and Alexander von Humboldt had not yet concluded their own expeditions of the continent, Arrowsmith was, nevertheless, able to incorporate the recent findings of Alexander Mackenzie. In 1789, Mackenzie had been commissioned by the North-West Fur Company of Canada (a rival of the Hudson Bay Company) to explore the Rocky Mountains and the Canadian Arctic. Mackenzie’s tour of some 2,990 miles was achieved in the astonishing period of 120 days, from Slave Lake to the Arctic shore and back. Mackenzie’s atlas, which was published with the account of Vancouver’s Pacific voyages in 1798, provided much of the coastal detail for Arrowsmith’s highly accurate depictions of British-controlled western Canada and Russian Alaska.

Please contact Arader Galleries San Francisco (tel: 415.788.5115) with any additional questions about this amazing map.

Envisioning the World; The First Printed Maps

Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus),
Alexandrian Greek, active 146–c. 170

Envisioning the World; The First Printed Maps, 1472-1700
October 2, 2009 – January 17, 2010 at the Sonoma County Museum
A selection of 30 of the earliest printed maps from the private collection of Henry and Holly Wendt to explore the major trends in Western intellectual history from the early Renaissance through the scientific era of the Enlightenment.

Henry Wendt describes this selection of maps in the audio guide for this exhibition as a ‘collection of stories that is the grand story of the progress of knowledge and understanding of our environment and how people understood the world’. Wendt goes on, however to point out that ‘every map serves more than one purpose’ whether it be decorative, navigational, informative, for commerce or marking the outpost of an empire.’

Envisioning the World is divided into four major chronological sections, each one associated with a pioneer in scientific concepts of the time. As one walks through the exhibition, the maps display the evolution in understanding of geography and the nature of our solar system and our place in it. The exhibition also shows innovations in printing beginning with maps printed from woodcuts and graduating to detailed copperplate engravings.

The educational opportunities offered in this exhibition are accessible for those new to the world of cartography as well as those well versed. We recommend visiting the Sonoma County Museum especially to all that are interested in cartography and world history.

Arader Galleries has a fine collection of antique maps from the 16th to the 20th centuries. For more information, visit our locations at 432 and 435 Jackson Street, or call 415.788.5115.

Tycho Brahe and the Island of Hven

Inside the Tycho Brahe Museum on Hven

Arader Galleries, San Francisco recently had the opportunity to attend the International Conference for the History of Cartography held in Copenhagen, Denmark this year. During our trip to Denmark, we traveled to the island of Hven, Sweden to visit the Tycho Brahe Museum and Observatory. Tycho Brahe was a Danish scientist and astronomer who dedicated 20 years to the study of the celestial heavens on Hven. He is best known in history for the astronomical observations which led Kepler to his theories of the Solar system. Hope you enjoy reading about his life below.

Tycho Brahe was born to Danish nobility in 1546 and by the age of 13, he was sent to the University of Copenhagen to study philosophy and rhetorics. A solar eclipse in 1560 awoke his interest in astronomy, and he began reading books on the subject. He attended the universities of Leipzig, Wittenberg, Rostock and Basel to study law, humanities and science. In Leipzig he started astronomical studies without permission, but was soon forgiven after demonstrating successes. He found that old observations were very inaccurate, and started to design methods and instruments for high-precision measurement of positions of celestial bodies.

On November 11th, 1572 he observed a new brilliant star in the constellation of Cassiopeia. Brahe's measurements showed that it really was a distant star and not any local phenomena. This was very intriguing at that time, since the sphere of the stars was considered to be divine and perfect. Brahe observed its brightness evolve until it faded away the next year. He reported the event in his book "De stella nova", which made him famous all over Europe.

Because of his scientific observations, Brahe was granted the island of Hven by the Danish King Frederick II in 1574. The site and other sites, which created the basis for financing the research project that he so strongly wished to devote his life to. On Hven he had a library, laboratory and platforms for observations of the skies. He also had assistants who lived with him on the island which were recruited from universities and from his colleagues in Europe that he maintained correspondence with. Brahe entered into multiple-year contracts with them. In these contracts, they committed themselves to assisting Brahe in his scientific work, and not to reveal the results that were achieved to any outside parties. In return, they received food, lodging and clothing. More than 100 assistants are mentioned by name, as being active on Hven, in the observation protocols, letters and other documents from this time. The research was carried out in subjects such as astronomy, chemistry, medicine, horticultural refinement, meteorology and cartography.

We strongly encourage you to visit the Tycho Brahe Museum on the beautiful island of Hven during your future travels to learn more about Brahe’s life and contributions to modern science.

Arader Galleries San Francisco is expanding!

Arader Galleries is thrilled to announce that it is opening a new gallery location at 432 Jackson Street, across the street from our existing location at 435 Jackson in the Historic Jackson Square district of San Francisco. Featured in the new location will be Arader Galleries’ extraordinary collection of cartography, Californiana, travel books, and architectural material as well as a collection of antique furniture. Of course we still have a fantastic collection of botanical and natural history material, which will remain at 435 Jackson.

We invite you to stop by on Friday, March 20th for a special open house to view the new space and for coffee, tea and refreshments.

Open House Reception
Friday, March 20, 2009: 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.
432 Jackson Street, San Francisco

For more information, please call 415.788.5115 or visit www.aradersf.com.

W. Graham Arader on the Economics of Maps

W. Graham Arader III was recently interviewed by Bloomberg radio for their ‘On the Economy’ series. Mr. Arader gives his expertise, from 35 years in the rare map business, on map collecting and current market for antique maps. We think you will find this a very interesting interview!

Click here for the interview

Gerard Mercator: The Most Celebrated Sixteenth-Century Cartographer

Gerard Mercator (1512-1594) / Jodocus Hondius (1563-1612)

“Orbis Terrae Compiosa Descriptio”
From Atlas
Amsterdam: c. 1623-1630
Hand-colored copperplate engraving

For nearly sixty years, during the most important and exciting period in the story of modern mapmaking, Gerard Mercator was the supreme cartographer, his name, second only to Ptolemy, synonymous with forms of map projection still in use today. His influence transformed land surveying and his research and calculations lead him to break away from Ptolemy’s conception of the size and outline of the continents, developing a projection that drastically reduced the longitudinal length of Europe and Asia and altered the shape of the Old World as visualized in the early 16th century. Although not the inventor of this type of projection, Mercator was the first to apply it to navigational charts in such a form that compass bearing could be plotted on charts in straight lines, thereby providing seamen with a solution to an age-old problem of navigation at sea. Mercator’s innovations, including the aptly named Mercator projection, continue to be employed in maps produced today, 400 years later.

The geographer died in 1594 after publishing just a few parts of the atlas that he had spent decades preparing. In 1604, after the death of Gerard’s son Rumold, the plates for his maps were sold to the great Amsterdam cartographer, Jodocus Hondius, who brought out the first of the so-called “Mercator-Hondius” editions in 1606. Hondius supplemented the original 107 maps with 39 new maps compiled under his own supervision, bringing the total number to 146, and had the original text expanded by Petrus Montanus. The new maps were of extremely high quality, and were for the most part devoted to parts of the world, such as America, that had been neglected by Mercator. Hondius’s first edition of the general atlas proved instantly popular, selling out within a year. Hondius continued to augment and perfect the atlas over the following years, constantly adding new maps and incorporating new discoveries and corrections. The first French edition came out in 1607, with a translation of the text by the historian Henri Lancelot-Voisin de la Popliniere. This world map is thought to have been published in the 1620s, as the title on the top edge shows the cracks that had developed in the copperplate in this time frame (Shirley, Mapping of the World).

Unlike the work of Abraham Ortelius, a contemporary (and equally celebrated) cartographer, Mercator’s maps were original. Ortelius engaged in the reduction and generalization of already existing maps, while Mercator, with his sense that scientific work should be original and new, checked the current knowledge of the earth’s topography against its fundamental sources and drew maps in an original manner. Mercator was the most skilled mapmaker of his time, spearheading the Golden Age of Dutch cartography. His maps were unsurpassed in terms of accuracy, and no less attention was given to their beauty. Other cartographers looked inevitably to the innovations of Mercator when compiling their own maps, and the reasons for such tribute are clear in every map contained in this spectacular atlas. Vividly hand-colored, it brought distant and exotic places to European viewers with outstanding clarity and immediacy, describing not just the terrain, but also including images of flora and fauna, as well as native peoples. Fearsome sea monsters and European sailing ships adorn the seas, while the glorious Baroque cartouches add gracefully curving architectural elements to the images. This beautifully-colored double hemisphere map of the world represents a great opportunity to acquire the most spectacular map from this landmark publication by the foremost cartographer in history.

This splendid world map is currently on display along with a selection of other fantastic maps of the world and the Americas by Abraham Ortelius, Alexis-Hubert Jaillot, Guillaume de L’Isle and Mercator's grandson, Michael Mercator. For more information please visit www.aradersf.com or call Arader Galleries at 415-788-5115.

Rare Book School at the University of London

View of the interior of the print and works on paper archive room at the British Museum's library.

Sixteenth century woodworking tools used by Albrecht Durer in his printmaking studio and shop for his original woodcuts. These are housed in the British Museum's print room.

Laying down paper to pull a print from an inked copperplate. Print workshop director, Michael Mann, from the Slade School of Fine Art in London leads us through the process.

It was an exciting summer for us! Our gallery spent a week in London attending Rare Book School at the University of London. This summer’s course focused on the History of Maps and Mapping which included seminars by top scholars in the field: Peter Barber, Head of British Library Map Collections; Catherine Delano-Smith, Editor of Imago Mundi – The International Journal for the History of Cartography; Laurence Worms, Ash Rare Books; Roger JP Kain, Professor of Geography at University of Exeter; and Sarah Tyacke, President of Imago Mundi and map specialist for Royal Holloway University of London.

During the week, we were able to view select items from the amazing map collection at the British Library. One of the highlights from this collection included an original Martellus manuscript atlas which arrived in England from Italy around 1800 when purchased by George III's son, the Duke of Sussex and then later purchased by the British Museum following the Duke's death in 1844 - truly one of their prized acquisitions.

Another highlight is what Peter Barber claims is one of the most important purchases the British Library has made in recent years - the Mercator Atlas of Europe. A composite atlas containing the only known manuscript maps in Mercator's own hand. Some of the printed maps have annotations in ink in Mercator's handwriting!

To top off this experience, we were also allowed access to the British Museum’s print room. Here, we were able to see some of the items from the permanent collection, including the woodworking tools used by Albrecht Durer to make his woodblocks.

The entire week was an incredible and educational experience! We look forward to next year’s seminars. To learn more about the program we attended, please feel free to contact the School of Advanced Study at the University of London.

Antique Maps: Who’s the Author?

John Melish
Engraved by J.J. Vallance & H.S. Tanner
Published by John Melish Philadelphia

During the 16th through 19th centuries map-making involved many diverse tasks, and most often the tasks were completed by several different laborers. Map-makers of this time such as Abraham Ortelius, Nicolas Visscher and John Melish did not create their maps and atlases solely by themselves, but as their names are usually the most prominent on the maps, they can appear as the exclusive producer of the map. Maps were conceptualized by the map-maker, Ortelius, Visscher and Melish, and constructed by the surveyor, the draftsman, the engraver, the colorist, and the publisher. At times the cartographer would take responsibility for all tasks in producing a map, but not usually; the cartographer employed a hydrographer to survey and measure the land, a draftsman to draw up a manuscript map by hand, an engraver to create the copperplate and printing, a colorist to paint the printed maps, and a publisher to issue and distribute the maps and atlases.

Generally, the cartographer was the mind behind the creation of the maps and atlases and oversaw his productions. He was someone who often came from a family of map-makers or publishers, seemingly falling into the business but undoubtedly having a great passion for his trade. Others realized the demand for geographical information and sought a profession in map-making. Abraham Ortelius, for example, started his career as a map engraver. It was through this profession that he became interested in compiling atlases, and so began his career as a map-maker. Later he would go on to become the geographer to Kind Philip II of Spain. In this task he would travel with the King on his expeditions where he would survey land and use his geographical knowledge to navigate and educate the King on his territories and those of other states.

On the other side of the spectrum, Scotsman John Melish began his career as a publisher. After visiting the United States on business and traveling through the territory extensively, he used his travel accounts to produce maps of early 18th century America. Because he was wealthy, Melish was able to employ the very best engravers for his projects and distribute his maps under his own name. After the publishing of his first set of maps and travel accounts, Melish made his business in Philadelphia in commercial cartography and geography.

Ultimately, the map-maker is known as the author, and his name is the name we remember. But there were many tasks necessary in creating atlases full of beautifully printed, colored and, at the time, accurate maps, and for each of these tasks there were specialists waiting to play their parts in making a map.