Africa

  An amazing and unique survivor, being a finely executed original manuscript map of the Praça de São Sebastião, the grand 16th century fortress which guarded the town of Ilha de Moçambique, the capital of Portuguese East Africa and a globally significant entrepôt for slaves, gold and ivory, and which today has the distinction of being the oldest complete fortress…

The most consequential map of Namibia made during the German colonial era, a gigantic 8-sheet work that is the first broadly accurate general map of what was the protectorate of Deutsch-Südwestafrika of a scale sufficient for operational use, compiled in great haste but with considerable skill, at the ‘Kolonial-kartographischen Institut’ in Berlin by the master cartographers Paul Sprigade and Max…

  An impressive archive consisting of a stellar original photograph and sixteen manuscript documents relating to the Comte d’Escayrac’s 1856 planned expedition to find the source of the White Nile, two years before John Hanning Speke successfully accomplished said objective, from the personal papers of Gabriel Aubaret, the mission’s second-in-command and subsequently a famous diplomat and a leading figure in…

The foundational map of Namibia – created on the eve of the formal colonization of the region by the venerable linguist, trader, and explorer Dr. Theophilus Hahn from his extensive personal reconnaissance and indigenous interviews, this monumental cartographic achievement accurately charts the routes, European settlements and missions, water sources, as well as the tribal territories and population distribution of the…

  Colour lithography, 96 x 63 cm (37.9 x 24.8 inches), (minor staining, tears repaired with modern tape and partly age-toned).  

[Fenn-i Coğrafya İçin Yazısız Harita Defteri. Harita Tersimi Usûlünün Mebâdisi / Blank Map Book for Science of Geography. The Basics of the Map Representation Method] آفريقا [Arika / Africa]   Ottoman filled-in blank atlas of Afrika with unique and exquisite original colour   8°. 22-28 pp. facing pages marked with same numbers [altogether 16 pp.] with hand coloured lithographed maps…

  Map of the Ottoman Empire with the Arabian Peninsula in the middle. Marked are the most important cities and the Hejaz Railway.   Colour lithography, 26 x 38 cm (10.2 x 14.9 inches), (soft fold in the middle slightly stained with tiny repaired holes and tears).

  Highly Important and Rare – a great monument of Enlightenment Era thematic cartography - Vicomte Grenier’s of sea chart showcasing his new, faster sailing routes across the Indian Ocean, discoveries which revolutionized European-Asian transportation and geopolitics.

  A 1778 manuscript map of the Spanish fortification Peñón de Alhucemas, off the Moroccan coast, was made by a North German officer and engineer Philip Ernst Colson.

A fantastic large-format propaganda broadside, or ‘wall newspaper’, made to celebrate the exploits of German General Erwin Rommel, the ‘Desert Fox’, and his Afrikakorps, printed in Fascist Spain in July 1942, before the pivotal showdown at El Alamein had been decided. 

  An extraordinary woodcut view of the Iberian enclave of Ceuta, on the north coast of Morocco, apparently a proof for Braun & Hogenberg’s famous copper engraved view of the city.

  A fine map of the Red Sea depicting Italy’s first major operation to establish an overseas colony, in Eritrea, commissioned by the Società Africana d’Italia, an influential lobbying-research organization, and originally published in an issue of their rare journal.

  An exceedingly rare map of a port in the Red Sea, printed on thin paper in Italian language, was sold separately for navigational uses.   Lithograph on thin paper, each 31 x 23 cm (12.2 x 9 inches).

  A very rare cartographic playing card featuring a map of Africa.

  An original manuscript sketch map of the Grahamstown-Great Fish River region of South Africa, the strategically critical ‘Eastern Frontier’ of the Cape Colony, made immediately in the wake of the Sixth European-Xhosa War (1834-6).

An amazing survivor, being an original manuscript caricature drafted during the Eighth European-Xhosa War (1850-3), one of the century-long series of brutal conflicts between Dutch, and more recently British, forces and the formidable Xhosa nation for control over the Eastern Cape Frontier, South Africa’s ‘Wild, Wild East’; involving a very clever use of imagery and dialogue, the caricature shows two…

A map from Umûm Vilayât-ı Şâhâneyi Hâvi Küçük Atlas - Umûmî Küçük Atlas (General Small Atlas)   Chromolithograph. 9 x 13,5 cm (3.5 x 5.3 inches).

  A unique example of a very rare chart of South Africa, with a curious Australian connection! Commander John Lamb’s chart showing the 1822 route of his ship ‘Hannah’, fighting the Agulhas Current rounding the Cape of Good Hope; but this example with a manuscript pastedown title regarding the route of the ‘H.M.S. Tamar’, plus manuscript traces of its route,…

A colossal ‘master plan’ of the Kinross Gold Mine in Transvaal (measuring 1.9 x 1.7 metres!), made by engineers around 1970 to showcase every detail of the immense subterranean world of one of South Africa’s largest and most productive gold operations; the mine since became world famous for the 1986 Kinross Mining Disaster, which highlighted the Apartheid regime’s horrific record…

  An extremely rare early Bloemfontein imprint featuring seminal primary sources concerning the end of the Orange Free State-Basotho Wars which secured the Anglo-Afrikaner balance of power in the region, as well as the security of what would become Lesotho, commissioned by the Volksraad of the Orange Free State as a work of ‘intellectual propaganda’ advancing its national claims. 

  Lithograph with original colour: 18 x 23 cm (7 x 9 inches) (soft fold, slightly age-toned and stained).

  A set of original, exquisitely executed manuscript plans of the blockhouse of the Prince of Wales Battery, one of the key components of the elaborate new defensive system that the British constructed around Cape Town (South Africa) during their first occupation of the colony from 1795 to 1803; drafted by Captain (later Major-General) George Bridges, the commanding Royal Engineer…