![]() (hammer prices given; Premium: 15% on the first £30,000 of the hammer price, 10% thereafter) |
Pre-sale interest centred on a collection of 74 maps from a ‘Lafreri atlas’ (a composite atlas produced in Italy in the third-quarter of the sixteenth century), sold as separate lots, and an early eighteenth century equivalent, in book form, published by the Widow and sons of Joachim Ottens, in Amsterdam circa 1720. |
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![]() The traditional claimant went for a winning bid of £10,000 (estimate £10,000-15,000, a figure arrived at from previous auction records), while the ‘new kid on the block’, the Robert de Vaugondy sold for £4,500 (estimate £900-1,200). In contrast, the ‘Amerique Septentrionale’, despite being one of the earliest maps of North America to show the United States, sold for a modest £500 (estimate £500-700). At the other range of the spectrum, from the discovery period of the Americas, was offered a rare map of Canada, by Samuel de Champlain, the ‘Father of New France’, published in 1632. Described as “one of the outstanding maps of Canada”, the map also contained important information for the New York and New England regions. Estimated at £14,000-16,000, the map fetched £24,000. Geographically of a similar period was an untitled manuscript chart of the sweep of West Indies’ islands from Puerto Rico to Trinidad, apparently a straight Dutch copy of a Spanish chart, retaining the original toponomy. The map is apparently very similar to charts from Dutch sea-atlases, published from the late 1650’s onwards, from when this example may date. Despite its interest, the chart sold for only £2,800 (estimate £2,500-3,000). One of the most attractive single lots in the sale was a unsigned manuscript chart of the Mediterranean Sea, but including the Atlantic coasts of Spain, Portugal and France, and southern Britain. Apparently a late example of the portolan chart genre, which reached a pinnacle of importance in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, this example was attributed to Placido Caloiro e Oliva, and dated circa 1640. It sold for £36,000 (estimate £25,000-30,000) |