Maps
18th Century Original Dutch Map of Martinique in The West Indies by Isaak Tirion
$490
€440 · dollar price at today's exchange rate
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Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.
- Kind
- Maps
- Size
- 41 × 49 cm (16.1 × 19.3 in)
- Places
- The Lesser Antilles, The West Indies
- Reference
- BG-13618-2
What the condition grades mean
- Excellent
- Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
- Very good
- Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
- Good
- Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
- Fair
- Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.
Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.
Guaranteed original. This is an original of the period stated, not a later reproduction or print-on-demand copy. If it is ever shown to be otherwise, we refund you in full.
Shipping to the United States. Sent from our gallery in Langweer, the Netherlands, flat between boards or rolled in a tube, and fully insured.
Delivery and import charges.
About this piece
Martinique, in a Dutch map by Isaak Tirion of Amsterdam, titled "Het Westindisch Eiland Martenique, volgens de nieuwste waarneemingen in kaart gebragt", with the imprint "t'Amsterdam by I. Tirion" in the cartouche. The sheet is an original eighteenth-century copper engraving.
The island is drawn in detail, with its hills and mountain ridges shown in dense hachures and the coast fringed with small bays. Place names are lettered in Dutch and French around the shore, including Fort Royal at the head of its large bay (the "Baay en Haven van Fort Royal"), St. Pierre on the northwest coast, La Trinité on the Atlantic side and Le Diamant at the southern end. The channels used by ships are marked as "Canaal voor groote Schepen" and "Canaal voor kleine Schepen". A compass rose stands in the upper right, and a boxed key at the lower right, the "Verklaaring der Merktekens", explains the signs for plantations, sugar works, water mills and batteries.
The title cartouche at the lower left is a rococo frame of scrolls with sugar cane growing beside it, a fitting emblem for an island whose plantations supplied much of France's sugar. Tirion's atlases and his smaller Dutch editions of colonial maps gave the Dutch public an up-to-date picture of the French and British West Indies.
