Title: MAPS & ATLASES, NATURAL HISTORY & HISTORICAL PRINTS, EPHEMERA
Date: December 6, 2012
Time: at 10:30 AM & 1:30 PM
Exhibition: Sat., December 1, noon-5
Mon., December 3, 10-6
Tues., December 4, 10-6
Wed., December 5, 10-6
Contact Person: Gary Garland
ggarland@swanngalleries.com

Features the Mapping of Japan: The Collection of Dr. Stephen and Michiko Levine, which boasts many of the earliest Western maps of Japan, including Robert Dudley's Carta particolare della Grande Isola de Giapone è di lezo con il Regno di Corai, a cornerstone model for later maps by Janssonius, Sanson, Van der Aa and Chatelain, Florence, 1647, shown top left.

Also from the Levine collection, Ortelius / Teixeira's Japoniae Insulae Descriptio, the first printed map of Japan to appear in an atlas, Antwerp, 1595.

Among a selection of Atlases, an unusual pocket issue of Anthony Finley's New American Atlas, Philadelphia, 1826.

A 1710 map based on Buddhist beliefs, made by Rôkashi Zuda of Kyoto, shows India, the birthplace of Buddhism, as the heart of the world, but also depicts Europe and the Americas.

A highlight among numerous books with plates, many featuring natural history subjects, is a first edition of John Gould and Richard Bowdler Sharpe's Birds of New Guinea and the Adjacent Papuan Islands, volumes 2-5, London, 1875-88.