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Good example of Richard Blome's scarce map of India and Southeast Asia, the earliest folio sized map of the region to be engraved in England.
While Speed's atlas was published prior to Blome, Speed's plates were engraved and printed in Amsterdam, while Blome's atlas was a wholly British production.
The map demonstrates the naïve engraving style characteristic of 17th Century English engravers, and features an elaborate heraldic cartouche and a dedication to the Governer Deputy and Court Committies of the Company Marchants tradeing into the East Indies.
Several sailing ships and sea monsters. Blome's maps, because of their rarity and importance in the history of English Cartography, are essential items for regional collectors. Blome first began engraving maps for his Geographical Description Of The Four Parts Of The World in 1667. The completed volume was in small folio, and contained 24 maps (plus one duplicated), engraved by Francis Lamb (who engraved this map), Thomas Burnford and Wenceslas Hollar.
Blome's principal handicap in the production of the atlas was the lack of a domestic mapmaking environment comparable with that in Europe. Also, to finance his work, he undertook subscribers, in exchange for a promise to add their coat of arms to certain maps. In later editions, if the renewal fee was not paid, Blome added a different subscribers coat of arms, leading to multiple images on various editions of the same map.
![[Straits of Malacca, Sumatra, Java and Western Borneo]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/51765.jpg)
![[Dutch Forts -- Jakarta, Amboine, Ternate, Solor, Banda] Vue et Description de Quelques-Uns des Principaux Forts des Hollandois dans les Indes](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/43122.jpg)
