Maps

An attractive early eighteenth century map of Asia with good original colour by the German mapmaker Johann Baptist Homann. In the bottom left hand corner is a finely engraved cartouche. There is a curious projection of the island of Hokkaido (Terra Yedso) in Northern Japan. A few years after this map was published early representations of the Peninsula of Kamchatka would appear. Hokkaido did not appear accurately on maps until the nineteenth century.

The Homann family were the most important map publishers in Germany in the eighteenth century. The business was founded by Johann Baptist Homann in Nuremberg c.1702. Shortly after publishing his first atlas in 1707 he became a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and, in 1715, he was appointed Geographer to the Emperor.