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The item illustrated and described below is sold, but we have another example in stock. To view the example which is currently being offered for sale, click the "View Details" button below.
Description

Old color example of the first state of De Wit's striking double hemisphere map of the World, with significantly new Cartographic detail in Southeast Asia and to the North of New Zealand.

The map shows the Briggs model of California s an island and the Straits of Anian.

The brilliant scenes in the corners combine images of the four seasons, the elements and the signs of the zodiac in a well-balanced and natural way. According to Shirley, De Wit's map is one of the most attractive of its time.

Condition Description
Old color, recently refreshed. Evidence of extra creasing at centerfold. Facsimile restoration to the left of the centerfold, beginning at the center of the map, just below the word Noort in "Mar Del Nort," expertly done.
Reference
Shirley 499.
Frederick De Wit Biography

De Wit (1629 ca.-1706) was a mapmaker and mapseller who was born in Gouda but who worked and died in Amsterdam. He moved to the city in 1648, where he opened a printing operation under the name of The Three Crabs; later, he changed the name of his shop to The White Chart. From the 1660s onward, he published atlases with a variety of maps; he is best known for these atlases and his Dutch town maps. After Frederik’s death in 1706, his wife Maria ran the shop for four years before selling it. Their son, Franciscus, was a stockfish merchant and had no interest in the map shop. At the auction to liquidate the de Wit stock, most of the plates went to Pieter Mortier, whose firm eventually became Covens & Mortier, one of the biggest cartography houses of the eighteenth century.