PARIS FRANCE 1863 DAVIES LARGE UNUSUAL ANTIQUE ORIGINAL LITHOGRAPHIC CITY MAP

Plan of Paris, & the Surrounding Communes shewing the Fortifications & all Modern Improvements.

Description: Striking and highly detailed fine unusual 1863 Benjamin Rees Davies's large-format original lithographic map featuring an aerial plan of Paris, France. The plan shows the city with its buildings, churches, streets, gardens, bridges, town walls and surrounding landscape.
 
'The Weekly Dispatch' newspaper between the years 1856 and 1862 included in each edition a map of a part of the world. During this period a total of 118 maps were issued. The maps bear the distinctive sign of a half globe with the figure of Mercury above. The engravers varied but included John Dower and Edward Weller.
 
In 1863 'The Dispatch Atlas' was published which contained a series of English county maps. The two were combined in 1865 as 'Cassell's Complete Atlas', with many maps in a large scale of areas not often seen, including a number of town plans.

Date: 1863 ( undated )

Dimension: Paper size approx.: cm 65,8 x 46,1

Condition: Very strong and dark impression on good paper. Map old original colored. Small marginal tears. Corners partially missing. Small foxing and browning. Small marginal tears. Minor loosing at the margin to the top near centrel folding. Small holes along central folding. Sheets folded. Conditions are as you can see in the images. 

Mapmaker: Benjamin Rees Davies (1789 - December 16, 1872) was an engraver, cartographer, painter, and map publisher active in the early to mid-19th century. Davies was born in Holborn, England, apprenticed as under John Lodge in 1803. He began publishing around 1811 and is known to have compiled many of own maps from original survey work. From approximately 1848 onward Davies published in conjunction with the Stanford Firm. He is also known to have engraved a number of maps for the Dispatch Atlas and the S.D.U.K. Davies was an early adopter of steel plate engraving and used the exceptional hardness of steel to create some of the most delicately engraved and beautifully produced maps of his era. He was quite famous in England for his detailed street plans of London, which he began publishing in 1848. Davies is known to have worked with numerous other cartographers of his period including French, Mexican, and American map makers. Many of his maps and plans continued to be published and updated posthumously well into the 1880s.