Reference Books
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| Van keulen Cartography |
This publication is the account of the Amsterdam firm of Van Keulen which was at the forefront of hydrographic cartography and the production and distribution of navigational aids for more than two hundred years. At the end of the seventeenth century Johannes van Keulen amalgamated the work of his predecessors, thereby laying the foundations for a business whose products extended far beyond the Dutch Republic. The business was situated in De Gekroonde Lootsman on the Amsterdam waterfront, and was continued by Johannes’s son Gerard, his grandson Johannes II, and his great-grandson Gerard Hulst van Keulen. After the latter’s death the firm of Van Keulen was first carried on by widow, and later by others, until its liquidation in 1885.
The Van Keulens played a major role in the supply of charts, navigating instruments and manuals to the ships of the Dutch East-India Company, and Johannes II became the Company’s official chart maker, a position continued by his son until the end of the eighteenth century.
Part 1 of the volume focuses on the history of the family, the business, the publishing firm and the products, explored through and based on new research and existing literature. These chapters set the wider context for
Part 2, which is entirely devoted to one of the firm’s most spectacular products: the more-than-750 extant drawn and hand-coloured nautical charts, listed in a catalogue and illustrated in colour. The originals are now preserved in libraries and collections in various European countries, in North and South America, Japan and Australia.
The volume contains seven appendices. The first four are transcriptions of manuscript sources preserved in the archive of the Dutch East-India Company. They are the official instructions for the Van Keulens as chart makers to the Company, a memoir concerning the required corrections of charts and navigating instruments, a report concerning the Indiase Zeeboek (the sixth volume of the Zee-Fakkel) and the journal of the Company’s chief accountant containing the purchase of navigational equipment between 1700 and 1796.
The last three appendices are a catalogue of all the loose sea charts printed by the Van Keulen firm up to 1801, their printed charts found in all editions of the Zee-Atlas and Zee-Fakkel, and facsimiles of the firm’s printed trade catalogues.
A loose set of index sheets helps to locate the manuscript charts on the modern world map.
The Van Keulen Cartography fills a gap as the manuscript charts have been given very little attention by historians of cartography, and there is no comprehensive genealogy or published history of the firm. It has been written and compiled by Dutch experts on the history of cartography and navigation, and for many years this will be the definitive publication on one of the most influential cartographic firms of the Netherlands.
633 blz. Linen, stamped with gold binding, 613 charts full-colour. With supplement of 20 index sheets.
Reference: (MapHist.COM_Reference Books_140 )
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