DONCKER, Hendrick (1626-1699)

De Zee-Atlas ofte Water-Waereld, vertoonende alle de Zee-Kusten van het bekende deel des Aerd-Bodems, Met een generale beschrijvinge van dien. Seer dienstigh vooralle Schippers en Stuurlieden; mitsgaders Koop-lieden om op't Kantoor gebruykt te werden Nieuwe

Amsterdam: Hendrick Doncker, 1659 (but c.1670). Folio. First edition Title dated 1659 and 51 hand-coloured double-page engraved maps with original hand colouring. Maps laid on supporting paper. Terminal endpaper with Jean Villedary watermark. Title, World, and Europe maps supplied and expertly remargined. Occasional marginal dampstaining and soiling. Occasional marginal tear, occasional tear to map (but supported with backing). Minor offsetting and faint toning. Occasional archival tissue reinforcement at verso centerfold and guard. Red manuscript pagination (16-204) at top foredge-margin corners. Laid paper reinstatement to terminal free endpaper. Minor edge damage to "Pas Caart van de Noort Zee". Lacking text leaves.

Full gilt-tooled vellum-covered boards (with central stamp of Atlas) from a contemporary Dutch workshop (gilt rubbed, some soiling, a few scratches, lacking fore-edge ties) top edge gilt. Housed in custom quarter morocco clamshell box.

Provenance: Ownership inscription "J.G. Nörbye | d. 20 - 12 - 92 " to front pastedown

A substantial seventeenth-century Dutch sea atlas by Hendrick Doncker, preserving the practical and commercial geography of Amsterdam's maritime world in 51 hand-coloured charts.

Doncker's Zee-Atlas was one of the principal Dutch maritime atlases of the later seventeenth century, designed for use by shipmasters, pilots, merchants, and others engaged in long-distance trade. This copy combines the 1659 first-edition title page with a later, expanded suite of charts largely conforming to Koeman's Don 12B. Hendrick Doncker worked in Amsterdam as a bookseller, chartmaker, publisher, and maker of navigational instruments, serving the maritime trades from his shop In 't Stuurmans Gereetschap (In the Mariner's Tools), located in the busy Nieuwebrugsteeg. Doncker first published the Zee-Atlas in 1659 with a much smaller suite of maps, then expanded the atlas over the following decades. Doncker's charts were valued for their practical clarity, coastal detail, rhumb lines, compass roses, scale bars, and continuing correction, features that made the atlas useful in the office and at sea. The present volume mostly conforms to Koeman's Don 12B, with the addition of "Zee-kaert van de Eems Elve, Weser, Eyder en de Hever" and a few variant plates. These include "Cust van Vranckryck synde Normandien, en Picardien" and "De Custen van Engelandt, tußchen Besevier en Portland" in place of the later "De Zee-Custen van Vrancryck"; "De Cust van Barbaria streckende van C.S. Vincent tot C. Verde... By Hendrick Doncker" in place of the later "De Cust van Barbaria, Gualata, Arguyn en Geneheo van Capo S. Vincent tot Capo Verde"; and an untitled map of the Caribbean in place of "Pascaerte vande Caribes Eylanden." The atlas opens with Frederick de Wit's "Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula," a double-hemisphere world map prepared for Doncker's atlas. De Wit's map adapts Blaeu's great world geography in reduced form, with revisions in northeastern Asia and in the St. Lawrence region, and with California shown as an island. The engraved decoration, including celestial and polar projections and allegorical figures of the four elements, gives the atlas an imposing visual opening before the sequence turns to more strictly maritime charts. The cartographic coverage extends across the navigable world known to Dutch seafarers. Northern Europe, the Baltic, the North Sea, the English Channel, France, Spain, Portugal, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic islands, the West African coast, the East Indies, the Bay of Bengal, the Caribbean, Brazil, northeastern North America, South America, California, and the Pacific are all represented. The American material includes Doncker's charts of Terra Nova, Nova Francia, New England, New Netherland, Virginia, Brazil, the Caribbean, the southern coast of South America, the coasts of Chile and Peru, New Spain, New Granada, California, and the South Sea between California and the Ladrones. Together they place Dutch Atlantic, Caribbean, and Pacific knowledge within a single maritime framework. The full list of maps is available upon request.

Koeman, Atlantes Neerlandici, Don 1 and Don 12B.

Item #41947

Price: $95,000.00