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Description

A Fine Large English Map of Asia

Nice full color example of Herman Moll's decorative map of Asia, one of the most decorative large format maps of Asia to appear in an 18th Century atlas. 

A very oddly shaped Korea is shown, with the Sea of Corea named. To the north, the Land of Iesso and Sraits of Vries and neighboring coastlines are largely unknown.

The Great Wall of China is shown and named.

The map includes phenomenal detail in all regions and entirely English nomenclature and includes notes on Jesuit explorations in the Philippines and a notation indicating that it is not yet known whether the northern parts of Japan are attached to the mainland or are an island. Interesting misshapen Japan and Korea. The various currents are shown on a monthly basis throughout the coast regions of the map

Inset maps include:

  • Bosphorus Straits
  • Gulf of Smyrna
  • Bombay Harbor
  • Hooghly River\
  • Nova Zemlya
  • British Factory area/Chusan Island
  • Amoy Island

A fine decorative example of the map, dedicated to William Lord Cowper, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain.

Herman Moll Biography

Herman Moll (c. 1654-1732) was one of the most important London mapmakers in the first half of the eighteenth century.  Moll was probably born in Bremen, Germany, around 1654. He moved to London to escape the Scanian Wars. His earliest work was as an engraver for Moses Pitt on the production of the English Atlas, a failed work which landed Pitt in debtor's prison. Moll also engraved for Sir Jonas Moore, Grenville Collins, John Adair, and the Seller & Price firm. He published his first original maps in the early 1680s and had set up his own shop by the 1690s. 

Moll's work quickly helped him become a member of a group which congregated at Jonathan's Coffee House at Number 20 Exchange Alley, Cornhill, where speculators met to trade stock. Moll's circle included the scientist Robert Hooke, the archaeologist William Stuckley, the authors Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, and the intellectually-gifted pirates William Dampier, Woodes Rogers and William Hacke. From these contacts, Moll gained a great deal of privileged information that was included in his maps. 

Over the course of his career, he published dozens of geographies, atlases, and histories, not to mention numerous sheet maps. His most famous works are Atlas Geographus, a monthly magazine that ran from 1708 to 1717, and The World Described (1715-54). He also frequently made maps for books, including those of Dampier’s publications and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Moll died in 1732. It is likely that his plates passed to another contemporary, Thomas Bowles, after this death.