Our Maps & Atlases department specializes in a wide range of works on paper. In addition to rare and antiquarian maps and atlases, these auctions feature natural history materials and color plate books, with a special focus on botanical and faunal natural history tomes, as well as unusual historical artifacts.
Highlights from the department include a complete copy of Mahmud Raif Efendi’s Cedid atlas tercümesi, the first known atlas published in the Muslim world, which reached $118,750; Novus Orbis by Richard Hakluyt, the first printed map to include the designation “Virginia,” for $80,000; a hand-colored aquatint and engraved plate, Carolina Parrot, from John James Audubon’s Birds of America for $137,000; and He Mau Palapala Aina A Me Na Niele No Ka Hoikehonua. No Na Kamalii, a Hawaiian language children’s geography book containing 8 engraved maps, for $68,750.
The department regularly contributes research to scholarship in the field with discoveries, including that of a previously unknown first state of Frederick de Wit’s map of the Netherlands, which sold for $16,250 in December 2016.
