Scarce and Important Africana Maps on Auction 114

From 11 to 18 April 2024, Antiquarian Auctions will feature a selection of scarce maps and charts of the African continent, Southern Africa and surrounding oceans – a preview commences on 5 April.

In the 1960s R.V (“Mick”) Tooley the famous London dealer, set about helping David Schrire, a South African living in London, to assemble a comprehensive collection of maps of Africa. Schrire’s collection formed the basis of Tooley’s Map Collectors’ Series of pamphlets and then his seminal Collectors Guide to Maps of the African Continent and Southern Africa. The collection has been untouched until recently.

The maps are being sold piecemeal in the hope that the maps will fill gaps in private and institutional collections. In the April auction, we’ll be offering twenty scarce maps and sea charts that surely will attract serious collectors. Some of the maps and charts have never been offered for sale and some are seldom in the market – perhaps once a decade or quarter century. More information about the collection can be found here.

Highlights include:

Lot 1: John Thornton & Joel Gascoyne, A Plat from England to Cape Bona Esperanca. Mount & Page, London, 1750.

This chart has not been described or sold before. It is a new engraving of part of John Seller's 'Western Ocean'. The 4-sheet, unsigned, undated sea chart depicts part of the Atlantic Ocean and its coastline: to the east, it extends from southern England to the Cape Agulhas, and, to the west, it extends to the northeastern of Brazil extending along the eastern coast as far south as Rio de la Plata.

Lot 7: Johannes Loots, Nieuwe Naauwkeurige Land-en Zee-kaart, van .... de Caap de Bonne Esperanc. Amsterdam, c. 1698

This anonymous and undated map is not well known and is important for both its historical record and its widespread influence on the eighteenth century mapping of the Cape of Good Hope.

Among the many reasons it is historically important is that it is the first printed map to attempt to depict accurately the expansion of the Cape of Good Hope settlement to 1690.

Lot 19: John Seller, A Chart of the Western Part of the East Indies with all the adjacent (sic) Islands from Cape Bona Esperanca to Cape Comorin. London, ca. 1678.

This attractive chart of the western part of the East Indies was first published in 1675 in both his English Pilot (Part 3) and Atlas Maritimus (the latter not reported in Tooley). The imprint reflects a 3-year period in the almost century-long publication history of Seller’s maps.

Lot 20: Johannes II van Keulen, Paskaart van een Gedeelte van de Aethiopische-Zee, Bevattende Insgelyks 't Eiland Madagascar met Desselfs Onderhorige Eilanden. Amsterdam, 1753.

This historically important chart of the western mid-sector of the Indian Ocean is from the 1753, so-called secret VOC Atlas: Part VI of the NieuweLichtende Zee-Fakkel by Johannes II van Keulen.