Amér Sept. Partie de Mexique. No. 59

Early and intensely detailed lithographic map of the north-eastern Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo Leon, with parts of Durango and Sinaloa, east to the border with Texas. The cities of Chihuahua, Monterrey, Culiacán and Durango are clearly marked and with a number indicating population size.



The map is incredibly detailed with a large number of place names and sections of the developing road network. The then new process of lithography has meant that the mountainous terrain can be etched across the map to show the topography skilfully and rather beautifully.


The cartographer, 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. Because of their large scale, they depict many of the remoter regions of the world on a scale previously unknown; the sheets covering the western parts of the United States, where exploration was still in its early stages, are unique in this respect. Their historical insets 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.


Original hand colour. (SL) [WIND4183]