Központi Antique Book Shop

150. könyvárverés

World atlas published by Georg Matthaeus Seutter including 92 hand-numbered maps and a distance indicating chart. Seutter spent his apprenticeship in Nuremberg, where he got to know the secrets of cartography from Johann Baptist Homann, then moved back to his hometown, Augsburg and started to work as Jeremias Wolff's lithographer. In 1707, he established his own press and became one of the most significant publishers of his age. The first - 16-page - edition of the atlas was issued in 1720. The following copies were compiled by the publisher according to the customer's demands. Based on the handwritten table of contents, our item is complete and includes an additional chart, which shows the distances between European cities in a table form (Curioser Städt-Zeiger). The maps - prepared mainly on the basis of Homann's, Guillaume Delisle's and Nicolas de Fer's earlier works - present the starry sky, the globe, the continents, the European countries, duchies and episcopates, some American territories (New York - New Jersey - Pennsylvania, Canada), Turkey, and the Holy Land as well as the cities of Jerusalem and Freiburg. Three more sheets offer strategical depictions. The beautifully elaborated title page - which had also been used (after the modification of the cartouche) by Seutter's son-in-law, Tobias Conrad Lotter following Seutter's death - was designed by Jacob Christoph Weyerman and engraved by Martin Gottfried Grophius. In the centre, the globe's Eastern Hemisphere is shown surrounded by the representatives and draft maps of the four continents. The contemporary coloured map sheets are richly illustrated and decorated by allegoric scenes and spectacular baroque cartouches. Restored, contemporary leather. With a larger brownish discolouration on one sheet (Silesiae Ducatus), otherwise clear maps.