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Description

Decorative regional map of Texas, California, and the Southwest, featuring Texas in its Republic configuration, with stovepipe reaching to Wyoming and Colorado. This map was published in London by John Tallis, the last great decorative mapmaker.

This is the second edition of the map, which includes a gold washing vignette not included in the first edition, representing the newfound global interest in the Californian gold rush. Two other vignettes show archeological ruins in the Yucatan and "Mexican peasantry."

Upper California is shown with the gold regions highlighted in gold, Arizona has a pre-Gadsden border with Mexico, and a host of other contemporary details are visible such as a massive Oregon. Numerous Indian tribes named throughout the Southwest. Early routes through Texas and the West are shown. The map includes a number of forts and outposts in Texas and Upper California.

Tallis's maps are renowned for their decorative elements, and in particular the vignettes they feature. This is a unique decorative map for collectors of Texas and the West.

John Tallis Biography

John Tallis (1817-1876) was a British map publisher. Born in the Midlands, Tallis came to London in the 1840s. Tallis began his London career with a series of remarkable London street views. He began a partnership with a Frederick Tallis, possibly his brother, but their collaboration ended in 1849. For the Great Exhibition of 1851, Tallis published the Illustrated World Atlas, one of the last series of decorative world maps ever produced. The maps were engraved by John Rapkin, a skilled artisan. The maps were later reissued by the London Printing & Publishing Company, who left the Tallis imprint intact, thus ensuring his enduring fame. In 1858, he began publication of the popular Illustrated News of the World and National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Personages, selling it in 1861 (it ceased publication in 1863).