Boston Rare MapsSpecializing in antique American maps & prints
An important, rare and very unusual map of North America and the Caribbean, extracted by Blaeu from his landmark West Indische Paskaert to meet a publishing deadline. The Insulae Americanae depicts eastern North America, much of Central America, part of Latin America, and the islands of the Caribbean. The brightly-painted arms of the Netherlands, England […]
This important work provides crucial information on eastern New York and southern New England. The main chart depicts the coast from Rensselaer Hook in New Jersey to roughly the “elbow” of Cape Cod, with extensive soundings and notations of shoals and other hazards. Much detail is given for Long Island Sound, Narragansett Bay and the waters […]
![John Thornton, Rob[er]t Morden and Phillip Lea, A NEW MAP OF NEW ENGLAND NEW YORK NEW IARSEY PENSILVANIA MARYLAND AND VIRGINIA. London, ca. 1685.](https://bostonraremaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/brm0975-thornton-ne-ny-nj-pa-md-va-1685-150x150.jpg)
The rare first obtainable state of the finest general map of England’s American colonies to date. This most important map is one of the earliest to adopt Augustine Herrman’s cartography for Virginia and Maryland. To the North it includes one of the earliest depictions of the Pennsylvania colony (est. 1681), the first printed chart of […]
In 1638, the General Court of the Plymouth Colony granted a group of settlers the rights to a new town named Taunton, the validity of which grant was confirmed by Wampanoag Sachem Massasoit. In 1664 Massasoit’s son and successor Metacomet-more familiar to us as “King Philip”–confirmed that grant in writing, with his interpreter John Sassamon […]
Published around 1700, this Kriegs Spiel, or “The War Game,” is a scarce and attractive sheet of playing cards designed to educate young people in the elements of conducting a military campaign. The sheet comprises 53 engraved panels numbered sequentially. All but one is a playing card using the French suits, each bearing an illustration of a military maneuver or fortification […]
![Zacharias Landteck, ZACHARIAS LANDTECKS Neu inventierte GEOGRAPHISHE UNIVERSAL-ZEIG UND SCHLAG-UHR[:] ZACHARIAS LANDTECKS Nieuw Uytgevonde WEERELD-BEELDIGH WYS EN SLAG WERK. [Nüremburg: Johann Baptist Homann, ca. 1705?]](https://bostonraremaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/BRM3118-Landteck-Schlag-Uhr_lowres-150x150.jpg)
An interesting, attractive and very rare print depicting a remarkable universal clock purportedly developed by Nuremburg clock- and watchmaker Zacharias Landteck (1670-1740). Not to be confused with the vastly more common version attributing the clock to map- and instrument maker Johann Baptist Homann. The print depicts one face of Landteck’s clock, flanked left and right […]
![[Mount and Page], A New SURUEY of the Harbour of BOSTON in NEW ENGLAND. London, [1706-1732.]](https://bostonraremaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/brm1759-harbour-of-boston-ca-1706-e1440885936331-150x145.jpg)
A considerable rarity, and the most detailed chart of Boston Harbor for its time. The chart depicts Boston Harbor from modern-day Winthrop in the north to Hull and Hingham in the south. It provides an immense amount of information for these complicated waters, including the many harbor islands, hundreds of soundings, and a multitude of rocks […]
A fascinating 18th-century map of the mid-Atlantic region, including the short-lived colony of New Sweden. Engraved in Upsala, Sweden by Jonas Silfverling, it was typically issued as a folding plate in Eric Tobias Biorck’s Dissertatio Gradualis de Plantatione Ecclesiae Svecanae in America. According to Streeter the Dissertatio was “the first book written by a native […]
An extraordinarily rare, interesting and sumptuously decorated allegorical map of the Island of Felicity, produced for one of the first Masonic orders to admit women. Background The map was designed and printed for l’Ordre de la Félicité. This short-lived Order was a quasi-Masonic secret society established in France in the early 1740s by Louis-Joseph Scipio La […]
An exceedingly rare, separately-issued map of the Kennebec River region of Maine from the early months of the French and Indian War, illustrating the multi-tiered contest for control between the British and French, between the British and the indigenous tribes, and between competing land interests. Offered in partnership with High Ridge Books. The map shows a […]