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Description

A Fine Presentation of the Atlas Suisse; In Matching Green Morocco Slipcases.

The First Scientific Survey of Switzerland.

Fantastic example of Weiss's great Atlas Suisse, the most detailed survey of the country from its time.

The Atlas Suisse was created by the surveyor Johann Heinrich Weiss at the expense of the industrialist Johann Rudolf Meyer. Published in the late 18th century, this seminal collection of maps is considered the first comprehensive and systematic atlas covering the entirety of Switzerland.

The work took a remarkable sixteen years to complete, starting in 1786 and finally being completed in 1802. It is the first scientific survey of the country, and would remain the most accurate map of Switzerland until Dufour's Topographische Karte der Schweiz, completed in 1864.

The Atlas is here composed of sixteen sheets, of which fifteen are map sheets. The sixteenth sheet, in the upper left, is split between the assemblage map and the supplement to maps 8 and 12, which is orientated with east to the north. A few rare copies of the Atlas possess a map of the cantons of Valais and Bern which is orientated differently to the rest of the maps, but the work is considered complete without that extra sheet.

Condition Description
Original hand color. Sixteen sheets, each dissected into fifteen pieces and mounted on contemporary linen. Stored in two contemporary green morocco cases, with red morocco pastedown reading "1 | Suisse de Weiss | no 1 A 8" and "2 | Suisse de Weiss | no 9 A 16." Some toning and soiling. A few dissected sheets slightly loose.