Catalogues

“Every hand’s a winner!” – A catalogue of 57 decks of playing cards from c1630-1991, including a pack unknown until 2016, a gorgeous set of embroidered silk brocade cards, Ganjifa cards, and several English seventeenth century decks.

Our latest catalogue offers a very select group of the earliest, the most important, and fiendishly rare, maps, atlases, and travel accounts, which are the first printed attempts by European commentators and adventurers, to depict their world, and the emerging outline of the Americas.

‘From Sea to Shining Sea’, the Petros G. Pelos Collection of exceptionally rare first-hand printed and manuscript travel accounts, atlases, portfolios, and governmental proclamations.

Offered together as a single entity, these 100 items not only reflect the emerging shape of the United States, from the end of the Revolutionary War to the beginning of the Civil War, but were fundamentally instrumental in creating its identity.

A cartographic voyage across time and space.

The William B. Ginsberg collection of World Maps; an epitome of the most beautiful, powerful, and influential cartographical images of the 15th and 16^th centuries. The earliest printed maps condensed and edited information from three “traditions” of map-making: Christian iconography, classical cartography, and contemporary charts. Ginsberg’s collection encapsulates the subtle metamorphosis of this amalgam of art and science, myth and metaphor, discovery and design, in nineteen maps: from the world map of the ‘Rudimentum novitiorum’ (1475), the earliest printed map, in magnificent original hand-colour; to the largest Italian world map published in the 16^th century, Giuseppe Rosaccio’s ‘Universale Descrittione di Tuto il Mondo’ (1657).

Playing cards is, in many ways, a hallmark of civilisation. Like maps and money, a deck of cards is a way of representing an entire value system and an understanding of human nature on paper. A game of cards embodies the inherent unpredictability of life, allowing us to grapple with the uncertainties, directing them towards our own ends. At the card table, when the hands are dealt, all men are temporarily equal; it is how they choose to play those cards that determines who will draw ahead. The players are required to practice both strategic and emotional discipline, and one’s reaction to a bad hand or a sudden windfall can reveal much about his temperament and priorities. As in cards, so in life.

A new catalogue focusing on celestial cartography, a selection of items that show how humans have charted the heavens and marked time by the light of the stars for over 500 years.

We are delighted to present our latest catalogue: Hollar – comprising a single-owner collection of works by the master etcher: from maps, topographical views, and architectural drawings, to portraits, records of the latest fashion, and studies of animals.

A new catalogue focusing on London, including a selection of Frost Fair prints, large-scale plans of London boroughs, and the first printed depiction of Elizabeth I as queen.

Popular from the end of the seventeenth century in London and Paris, trade cards performed the dual functions of advertisements and maps, directing the public to the merchants’ stores – often with rambling descriptions to help locate the business in an era where formal street address numbers were rare. Trade cards were sufficiently small so that they could be carried in the gentleman’s pocket or lady’s purse.

Ten years in the making, this collection of cartographic ephemera – including advertisements, catalogues, manuscript correspondence, portraits, price lists, and trade cards – physically illustrates the struggles, exchanges and e orts of some of the leading gures of the map trade over the past five centuries.

The world’s obsession with discovering the exotic source of cinnamon and other elusive spices grew throughout the Roman era and into the medieval period, defining what it meant to be wealthy and powerful. From India to Europe the trade had a profound social, emotional and economic impact; giving rise to some of the first truly international trade routes, and shaping the structure of the world economy in a way that can still be felt today.