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  An amazing survivor - a large format working manuscript sea chart of Brazil’s Rio Pará Estuary, leading to the port of Belém, a great trading port of tropical cash crops that was the gateway to the Amazon; the chart was obviously drafted by one of the many British merchant mariners who frequented Belém during the 1820s, during the heady…

  Two volumes of rare pamphlets, likely given as gifts to the members of Christ's Church in Tsingtao after World War I, reflect a significant period for the German community in China. During uncertain times, especially with thousands of men still imprisoned in Japanese POW camps, the evangelical church served as a vital center for support.  

  This text, translated from a Chinese source, focuses on personal development, inner peace, understanding one’s life goals, and fostering love for humanity. It emphasizes the importance of organized thoughts, a tidy home, and an orderly environment around our living spaces.  

  A collection of 20 poems was translated from Chinese to German by Richard Wilhelm. The images included in the book were sourced from various publications and were likely mounted by the author himself or by his circle. The illustrations and their number vary (we could trace between 3 and 6 illustrations) among the different examples of the title.  

  Translations of Chinese poems involving motifs of spring by Richard Wilhelm, with handsome original silk binding with Chinese floral pattern.  

  A charming and ephemeral Portuguese lunisolar calendar, which form has survived until today in a modern publication called Borda d'Água, named after the alleged first author of this work.  

A rare book of the Octoechos and other hymns for Arabic-speaking members of the Greek Orthodox Church, printed early at the Patriarchal Press of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

A rare manual for practical warfare in Eritrea at the beginning of the Italian invasion in 1887 was written by an anonymous author, well acquainted with local habits, geography, and climate.

A rare travelogue from Istanbul to North America and the Caribbean, written in French by P. G. Foscolo from a family of shipowners. Printed in Istanbul.

A unique private photo album representing the collection of works by Austrian-Hungarian artist Elisabeth Neumayer-Somossy, whose creations transitioned from applied arts to highly valued artworks.

Rare - the pioneering and definitive 19th century study of Macau’s Chinese community which after three centuries under Portuguese rule had developed many distinct cultural characteristics, covering subjects such as cuisine, attire, weddings, homes and domestic habits, justice, religion, festivals, commerce (the city’s great bazaar), medicine, as well as a valuable chapter on the Chinese emigration to Cuba that flowed…

A translation of a Chinese folk tale with a decorative title page and mounted illustrations.

Translation from Chinese of twelve poems and short texts featuring autumn motifs by Richard Wilhelm.

An amazing original artefact from the Japanese Imperial Court during the glorious days of the Meiji Emperor, and of Japan’s ongoing opening to the West, being the original manuscript invitation presented to Joaquim José da Graça, the Governor of Macau and the Portuguese Minister Plenipotentiary to Japan, to attend an audience with the Meiji Emperor on July 5, 1882, written…

The very rare first state of J.F.W. Des Barres’s beautifully rendered chart of Plymouth Bay, Massachusetts, famously the site of the Mayflower Pilgrims’ landing at ‘Plymouth Rock’; after the first scientific mapping of the bay executed by Thomas Wheeler, as part of Samuel Holland’s General Survey of the Northern District of British North America, an epic endeavour that trigonometrically charted…

A rare publication with an early article on the cultivation of potatoes in Austria.

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…

administrator or military officer to be employed while making a reconnaissance of the island in the tense period leading up to World War I; featuring 26 colour photolithographed maps and 1 legend sheet all published in Antananarivo by the colonial military press, the ‘Service géographique de l’Etat Major du groupe de l’Afrique Orientale’, including 19 provincial maps and 6 large-format, sophisticated…

An amazing artifact of Indonesian Independence, being an original draft of the first constitution of an independent Indonesia, as ratified at the famous ‘Round Table Conference’ (August 23 to November 2, 1949) in The Hague that set the final arrangements for the county’s sovereignty which was achieved on December 27, 1949; the present crudely-made mimeograph of a typescript is one…

[20 pp.], 23 x 19 cm (9 x 7.5 inches), manuscript in Italian, in dark brown ink on 10 sheets of laid paper with a post horn watermark and name of Van der Ley paper makers, and watermarks with initials GR and a crown (minor age-toning, tiny holes from binding on the spine, unbound and inserted in a later marbled…

Very Rare – the first edition of ‘Monzongo’, “the most popular anti-slavery production staged across the Netherlands until well into the nineteenth century”, authored by Nicolaas Simon van Winter, the eminent merchant, poet and dramatist who became an ardent Abolitionist upon witnessing the brutal Dutch crackdown which ended the Berbice Slave Rebellion (1763-4), in modern-day Guyana; the play concerns an…

The original proposal for the grand Modernist masterplan to redevelop Caracas, conceived at the hight of the Venezuelan Oil Boom, when the city was one of the fastest growing and most economically vibrant urban areas on earth; illustrated by over a dozen sophisticated thematic maps, this preliminary study of the ‘Plano Regulador’, developed by an all-star international team of urban…

An exceedingly rare depiction of a Prague folk festival for the Coronation of Emperor Ferdinand I and Maria Anna of Savoy, lithographed in Litoměřice, showcases unique ethnographic and documentary details from this historic event as well as the diversity of Bohemian culture and social life of the early 19th century in Prague.   Lithograph, 55 x 69 cm (21.6 x…

A rare map of the Bosporus commissioned by Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II and created by Prussian military surveyor Helmuth von Moltke.   Lithography with original colour in outline, 73,5 x 68 cm (29 x 26,77 inches), dissected in 20 segments and mounted on linen. An advertisement of Artaria, Vienna, on green paper mounted on one of the segments verso. Housed…