Maps

Four military maps encompassing Siam (Thailand), Hong Kong, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia took an unexpected £3700 at the Peter Wilson (22% buyer’s premium) Arms, Militaria, Medals & Firearms auction earlier this year.

'La Navigation du Roy d’Ecosse' by the French cartographer Nicolas de Nicolay (1517-83) is said to be the oldest accurate map of coastal Scotland.

As ever, the most recent sale held by Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) contained a great many maps and atlases and shown below is one of the highlights.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

Two key early maps of colonial North America were offered for sale at Ramsay Cornish in Edinburgh on December 7.

Bid to £32,000 in a Gloucestershire auction was a 1599, first Latin edition of the Dutch traveller and explorer, Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s Navigatio ac itinerarium…

A selection of maps of US cities from recent auctions stateside.

Focusing on south-east Asia, a 90-lot map section in an Essex sale comprised the extraordinarily successful first portion of a collection of maps and charts assembled by Christopher Beresford-Jones.

Two early maps of colonial north America come for sale at Ramsay Cornish in Edinburgh on December 7. They were discovered at the Edinburgh home of the late Dr Ann Carswell, an American born in Washington and educated at Cornell and Harvard.

One exceptional and very successful lot in a recent Yorkshire sale focused on penal reforms on the far side of the world.

The first tranche of a private collection of predominantly Far Eastern maps and charts sold for more than £500,000 at Reeman Dansie and included a house record.

A pocket globe with some areas still a mystery leads a maritime auction at Exeter saleroom Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood.

This double-page engraved chart is from an early-17th century pilot book which is another of the highlights from the Mopelia Collection of atlases and travel books offered in London.

This map of Milan will feature in the sale of books and manuscripts to be held in the city by Il Ponte on September 24.

A complete set of plans showing what was once the world’s largest industrial complex and the British state’s single biggest investment has sold in Cornwall. Thomas Milton’s plans of the Royal Dockyards sold to an online buyer for £10,000 (plus 18% buyer’s premium) at David Lay's latest sale in Penzance.

A pre-press version of a key map of colonial America emerged for sale at Swann Auction Galleries in New York on June 6. Carrying an estimate of $30,000-50,000, it sold at $100,000/£76,900 (plus 25% buyer’s premium) – a sum that reflected its extraordinary provenance.

Over in Kensington Gore’s Royal Geographical Society, The London Map Fair includes an astronomical highlight to mark the 50th anniversary of the first moonwalk. The map, signed and inscribed by Buzz Aldrin, shows the lunar landing site, and is offered by The Map House for £7500.

Successfully bid to £80,000 among cartographic lots offered in London was a fine coloured copy of Ortelius’ Theatrum… of 1592.