Philippe Vandermaelen
Southern Arabia and Yemen, 1827
18 ½ x 21 ½ in
47 x 55 cm
47 x 55 cm
MEAST3370
Asie - Partie de L’Arabie. No. 100 Early and detailed lithographic map of southwestern Arabia and Yemen, with part of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The...
Asie - Partie de L’Arabie. No. 100
Early and detailed lithographic map of southwestern Arabia and Yemen, with part of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The map also shows the northeastern coastline of Eritrea and Djibouti, Africa.
The map traces the western coastline of Arabia from from Jazan (Ghesen) through Yemen and northeast towards Hadramaut, marking the major cities of Mocha, Aden, Sana'a and Al Hudayday (Hodeida).
In the Red Sea, a tangle of explorer routes and soundings. One of the routes shown is that of French Captain de Rossily who navigated the Red Sea in 1787 aboard the frigate "Vénus" during a scientific expedition in the Indian Ocean (1785-88).
Philippe Vandermaelen
Philippe Vandermaelen was born in Brussels in 1795 and, at the age of 21, inherited a fortune from his father who had been a successful soap manufacturer. Financially independent, Vandermaelen was able to devote his life to the study of geography and in 1829 he founded a geographical institute in Brussels.
Vandermaelen's most important work, entitled "Atlas Universel", was an enormous atlas consisting of over 400 separate map sheets covering the world on the huge scale of 1:1,6 million. Each map sheet was designed using a special projection so that, if the owner of the maps so wished, they could all be joined together to form a globe with a diameter of 7.75 meters (This globe was actually built in Vandermaelen's institute in Brussels). The map sheets were printed using the process of lithography, which was an early use of this printing method for map making, and were then usually delicately hand coloured to emphasise boundaries and outlines. The complete atlas took only 3 years to make, a very short time for such a large project, and it was sold in instalments over a two year period from 1825.
Examples of Vandermaelen's map sheets are of great interest to the collector for a number of reasons. Firstly their large scale. The sections depict many of the remoter regions of the world on a scale previously unknown or unattainable. Particularly for the collector of Americana and Australasia, the sheets covering the western United States and Pacific respectively, where exploration was still in very early stages, are unique in this respect. Their historical insets, descriptions and statistics, along with their great visual clarity, make Vandermaelen's maps fascinating and valuable antique documents which also have superb visual appeal.
Original hand colour [MEAST3370]
Early and detailed lithographic map of southwestern Arabia and Yemen, with part of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The map also shows the northeastern coastline of Eritrea and Djibouti, Africa.
The map traces the western coastline of Arabia from from Jazan (Ghesen) through Yemen and northeast towards Hadramaut, marking the major cities of Mocha, Aden, Sana'a and Al Hudayday (Hodeida).
In the Red Sea, a tangle of explorer routes and soundings. One of the routes shown is that of French Captain de Rossily who navigated the Red Sea in 1787 aboard the frigate "Vénus" during a scientific expedition in the Indian Ocean (1785-88).
Philippe Vandermaelen
Philippe Vandermaelen was born in Brussels in 1795 and, at the age of 21, inherited a fortune from his father who had been a successful soap manufacturer. Financially independent, Vandermaelen was able to devote his life to the study of geography and in 1829 he founded a geographical institute in Brussels.
Vandermaelen's most important work, entitled "Atlas Universel", was an enormous atlas consisting of over 400 separate map sheets covering the world on the huge scale of 1:1,6 million. Each map sheet was designed using a special projection so that, if the owner of the maps so wished, they could all be joined together to form a globe with a diameter of 7.75 meters (This globe was actually built in Vandermaelen's institute in Brussels). The map sheets were printed using the process of lithography, which was an early use of this printing method for map making, and were then usually delicately hand coloured to emphasise boundaries and outlines. The complete atlas took only 3 years to make, a very short time for such a large project, and it was sold in instalments over a two year period from 1825.
Examples of Vandermaelen's map sheets are of great interest to the collector for a number of reasons. Firstly their large scale. The sections depict many of the remoter regions of the world on a scale previously unknown or unattainable. Particularly for the collector of Americana and Australasia, the sheets covering the western United States and Pacific respectively, where exploration was still in very early stages, are unique in this respect. Their historical insets, descriptions and statistics, along with their great visual clarity, make Vandermaelen's maps fascinating and valuable antique documents which also have superb visual appeal.
Original hand colour [MEAST3370]
