UNITED KINGDOM & IRELAND 1749 HOMANN HEIRS & MAYER ANTIQUE COPPER ENGRAVED MAP

Regnorum Magnæ Britanniæ et Hiberniæ Mappa Geographica iuxta Observationes astronomicas recentiores denuo correcta et ad formam legitimæ projectionis reducta à Tobia Maiero edentibq Homanianis Heredibus Norimbergæ A° 1749. 

Description: Striking and highly detailed fine unusual 1749 Homann Heirs's copper engraved map of the British Islands. Covers United Kingdom (England, Wales & Scotland), Ireland as well as the coast of Netherlands, Belgium and part of northern France. The map notes cities, towns, villages, rivers, lakes, fjords and islands. Inset map of the Shetland Island at the top right quadrant. The map is completed by large decorative title cartouche, a topographic key, five mileage scales, and an alternate title running along the top: "A General Map of Great Britain and Ireland with Part of Holland, Flandres, France, &c. Agreable to Modern History By the Heirs of late Mr. Homann, at Nuremberg, 1749 Priviledged by Emperours Majestis". 
 
This map was created by Tobias Mayer and published by Homann Heirs in 1749.

Date: 1749 ( dated )

Dimension: Map size approx.: cm 58,1 x 50,2

Condition: Very strong and dark impression. Map sticked on paper on the verso. Map old original colored. Short margins. Corners partially missing. Small foxing and browning. Small tears repaired on the verso. Small tears. Map folded. Conditions are as you can see in the images. 

Mapmakers: Johann Baptist Homann (March 20, 1664 - July 1, 1724) was the most prominent and prolific map publisher of the 18th century. Homann was born in Oberkammlach, a small town near Kammlach, Bavaria, Germany. As a young man Homann studied in a Jesuit school and nursed ambitions of becoming a Dominican priest before converting to Protestantism in 1687. Following his conversion, Homann moved to Nuremberg and found employment as a notary. Around 1693 Homan briefly relocated to Vienna, where he lived and studied printing and copper plate engraving until 1695. Afterwards he returned to Nuremberg where, in 1702, he founded the commercial publishing firm that would bear his name. In the next five years Homann produced hundreds of maps and developed a distinctive style characterized by heavy detailed engraving, elaborate allegorical cartouche work, and vivid hand color. The Homann firm, due to the lower cost of printing in Germany, was able to undercut the dominant French and Dutch publishing houses while matching the diversity and quality of their output. By 1715 Homann's rising star caught the attention of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the VI, who appointed him Imperial Cartographer. In the same year he was also appointed a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Homann's prestigious title came with a number of important advantages including access to the most up to date cartographic information as well as the "Privilege". The Privilege was a type of early copyright offered to a few individuals by the Holy Roman Emperor. Though not as sophisticated as modern copyright legislation, the Privilege did offer a kind of limited protection for several years. Most all J. B. Homann maps printed between 1715 and 1730 bear the inscription "Cum Priviligio" or some variation. Following Homann's death in 1726, the management of the firm passed to his son Johann Christoph Homann (1703 - 1730). J. C. Homann, perhaps realizing that he would not long survive his father, stipulated in his will that the company would be inherited by his two head managers, Johann Georg Ebersberger and Johann Michael Franz, and that it would publish only under the name Homann Heirs. This designation, in various forms (Homannsche Heirs, Heritiers de Homann, Lat Homannianos Herod, Homannschen Erben, etc..) appears on maps from about 1731 onwards. The firm continued to publish maps in ever diminishing quantities until the death of its last owner, Christoph Franz Fembo in 1848.

Tobias Mayer (February 17, 1723 - February 20, 1762) was a German astronomer and cartographer famous for his studies of the Moon. He was born in Marbach, Germany and raised in Esslingen in poverty. Between 1744 and 1746, Mayer studied engraving in Augsburg under Andreas Silbereisen (1713 - 1751). Moving to Nuremberg, he began working for the Homann Heirs company in 1746. There, he showed outstanding prowess and introduced many improvements to cartography. For example, Mayer composed Mappa Critica, which illustrated the accuracy, or rather lack thereof, of the latitudes and longitudes of locations in Germany. The map showed three Germanies according to three different cartographers, de l'Isle, Homann, and himself. 'The latitudes of the cities was mostly consistent, whereas the longitudes of some places (such as Dresden or Prague) differed by as much as a degree, thus showing to what extent longitude was problematic even on land' (Wepster, Steven, Between Theory and Observations: Tobias Mayer's Explorations of Lunar Motion, 1751-1755, Berlin, 2009). Mayer went on to create some of the first charts of the Moon and his chart of the full moon was unsurpassed for half a century. His fame comes from his lunar tables, and thanks to his scientific reputation he was elected as the chair of economy and mathematics at the University of Göttingen in 1751. He became superintendent of the observatory in 1754, where he worked until his death in 1762. Mayer is occasionally erroneously referred to as 'the Elder' or 'Johann Tobias the Elder'.