Asia

  Extremely Rare – a pair of large-format maps respectively depicting Northern and Southern India, featuring the ecclesiastical divisions of the Roman Catholic on the subcontinent, prepared for the Vatican’s State Secretariat by Girolamo Petri, issued within his monumental atlas, ‘L’Orbe Cattolico ossia Atlante Geografico Storico Ecclesiastico’.

  A rare large format Japanese map of India and Burma, ‘pirated’ from a British map by the venerable bookseller Maruzen, issued during the height of World War II, as Japan conquered Burma and before its (ultimately ill-fated) invasion of India during ‘Operation U-Go’ (1944).   Colour print, folding into original printed paper sleeve (Very Good, some toning along old…

  A seemingly unique engineer’s planning map of the Cirebon-Kroya Railway, a vital link that traversed the midriff of Java, connecting the north coast and south coast rail networks, likely made in 1912-3, just before construction was commenced on the project, which was completed in 1917; the map is printed by an unusual blue-tinted photolithographic technique and features the proposed…

  Very Rare – the first broadly accurate British sea chart of the southwestern coast of Sumatra, a critical region home to the important British base of Benccoolon-Fort Marlborough (modern Bengkulu), published by William Herbert in 1758.

  Very Rare - the first broadly accurate British sea chart of the Straits of Sunda, but also extending to include West Java (including Jakarta) and southeastern Sumatra, published by William Herbert in 1758.

An unique and extraordinary artifact of the successful Dutch endeavours to gain colonial dominion over West Sumatra during the 1830s, in the wake of the Padri War (concluded 1837) and the 1832 intervention against the Aceh Sultanate, being an impressively detailed original manuscript itinerary map of West Sumatra, including it rugged Minangkabau Highlands, depicting a dense archipelago of villages and…

  A pair of attractive and richly composed original 19th century watercolour views of two of Batavia’s (Jakarta, Indonesia) most important colonial buildings, being the ‘Willemskerk’ and the Residence of the Commander-in-Chief of the Dutch Army in the East Indies; executed by “D. Colleart” – a rare find, as very few original manuscript views of Batavia from the era survive.#…

  A unique and historically important artefact, being a highly detailed and beautifully coloured original manuscript map of Sendai, then the largest city in Japan north of Edo (Tokyo), and a major commercial centre of around 50,000 residents, built just across the river form the famous Aoba Castle, labelling all streeta, outlining all major cadastral lots and noting all key…

  [Map of the Fire of Tokyo. Edited by the Relief Information Bureau of the Tokyo Imperial University]   A very large and impressive map chronicling how the Great Kanto Earthquake (1923) and the resulting inferno, that was the greatest urban fire to date, destroyed much of Tokyo, based upon analysis conducted by academics at the Tokyo Imperial University, it…

A seemingly unrecorded variant of an extremely rare, colossal ‘Headquarters Map’ of French Indochina (modern day Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) that was the blueprint for the imminent French colonial control takeover of Laos; the map was made in the immediate wake of the Third Mission Pavie (1889-91), led by the brilliant eccentric diplomat-explorer August Pavie that secured the pathway for…

  A very rare wall map of the Federation of Malaya (today’s peninsular Malaysia) made only the year after its independence from Britain, an entirely bilingual work (Chinese-English) executed by a Chinese draftsman, Li Menphy, and published in Hong Kong for the benefit of Malaya’s large Chinese population and the many Hong Kongers who had strong connections to that country…

  First modern, separately printed geological map of Mount Fuji   Colour print on thin paper 95 x 75 cm (38.2 x 29.5inches) (slightly age-toned, soft folds, small holes on the crossings of the folds).