Africa

  Colour lithograph, 120 x 79 cm (47.2 x 31.1 inches) (soft folds slightly age-toned with tiny, partly repaired holes, tiny tears in margins, overall in a good clean condition).  

  The only known example of a fascinating cyanotype (blueprint) plan of Sekondi, capturing the Gold Coast’s (Ghana) main commercial port during the Edwardian boom period of economic and infrastructure development - a value artefact of the the Industrial Revolution and urbanism in Sub-Saharan Africa.  

  A very rare large format work from the sequence of the first broadly accurate maps of the Gold Coast (today’s Ghana), created by the Intelligence Division of the British War Office, with exceedingly detailed coverage of travel routes into the interior and the labelling of the domains of tribal nations, the present edition was made to guide British forces,…

This chart maps the mouth of the Jubba River in southern Somalia, long a vital lifeline for agriculture and trade.  The chart was made from surveys conducted by Commander Giovatto of the Italian Navy in 1908.    Zincograph (Very Good, some light toning and light wear along old folds), 53 x 61 cm (21 x 24 inches).  

An Italian map of the natural harbour of Kismaayo, in the far south of Somalia.     Photozincograph, with navigational markers heightened in yellow and some details added in manuscript in red pen, with pastedown date stamp in lower left corner (Very Good, some wear along old folds), 55.5 x 70.5 cm (22 x 27.5 inches).  

  A rare and highly attractive work of patriotic propaganda, being a large map of Libya celebrating Italy’s invasion of the country during the Italo-Turkish War (1911-2), created early in the conflict by the Societá editoriale milanese.   Colour print (Very Good, clean and bright, some wear along old folds, some minor marginal staining, far right margin, once bearing additional…

The first edition of the first comprehensive, scientifically accurate geological map of Libya, a grand, bilingual (English - Arabic) separately issued production primarily made to aid the country’s burgeoning oil industry; the result of a collaboration between Louis Conant and Gus Goudarzi, two of America’s most esteemed geologists, fulfilling a joint project of the U.S. State Department and the pro-Western…

Lithographed map with original hand colour, dissected into 18 sections and mounted upon original linen, folding into original dark green cloth covers with publisher’s pastedown label, publisher’s advertisements as front endpaper (Wrappers slightly pale with worm holes on the spine, internally clean), 51 x 70 cm (20 x 27.6 inches).

  A fine and scarce sea chart of St. Augustin’s (Anantson̈o) and Tullea (Toliara) bays, amongst the finest anchorages on the west coast of Madagascar, published by the leading chartmakers of Laurie & Whittle.

  Very rare – the first edition of Captain William Nichelson’s masterly large-format sea chart of St. Augustin’s Bay, Madagascar, a key harbour on the Mozambique Channel, along the route between Europe and India, first issued in the 1767 edition of William Herbert’s important atlas, ‘A New Directory for the East Indies’.

  The very rare first edition of the foundational map of the British colonial regime in Egypt; created by the Intelligence Department of the War Office on the eve of the Anglo-Egyptian War (1882), whereby Britain forcibly made Egypt a protectorate, so gaining dominance over the Suez Canal; predicated upon the best sources, the very large four-sheet work was the…

An exquisite ‘objet d’art’, being a unique example of William Faden’s map of the Battles of Abukir and Alexandria (1801), France’s ‘last stand’ in Egypt, printed on silk with details richly embroidered in coloured silk thread, clearly a prestation piece made for a highly important figure.   Copper engraving on silk with details contemporarily heightened in embroidery of coloured silk thread, contemporarily…