1757 Thomas Jefferys Antique Print of a Ottawa Indian of Ontario Canada & NE USA

Description: contact usebay profileebay store Habit of an Ottawa an Indian Nation of N. America Cartographer : - Jefferys, Thomas (1719 - 1771) Date: - 1757 Size: - 11in x 8 1/2in (280mm x 215mm)Ref#: - 25091Condition: - (A) Very Good Condition Description: This original copper plate engraved antique print of an Ottawa or Odawa Indian of North America was published in the 1757 edition of A Collection Of The Dresses Of Different Nations, Antient and Modern.....published by Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, in the Strand., MDCCLVII. Anthony Walker, draughtsman & Charles Grignion, engraver General Definitions: Paper thickness and quality: - Heavy and stable Paper color : - off white Age of map color: - Colors used: - General color appearance: - Paper size: - 11in x 8 1/2in (280mm x 215mm) Plate size: - 11in x 8 1/2in (280mm x 215mm) Margins: - Min 1/2in (12mm) Imperfections: Margins: - Light creasing and age toning Plate area: - Light creasing and age toning Verso: - Light creasing and age toningBackground: The Odawa or Ottawa, to mean traders, are an Indigenous American ethnic group who primarily inhabit land in the Eastern Woodlands region, commonly known as the northe-astern United States and south-eastern Canada. They have long had territory that crosses the current border between the two countries, and they are federally recognized as Native American tribes in the United States and have numerous recognized First Nations bands in Canada. They are one of the Anishinaabeg, related to but distinct from the Ojibwe and Potawatomi peoples. After migrating from the East Coast in ancient times, they settled on Manitoulin Island, near the northern shores of Lake Huron, and the Bruce Peninsula in the present-day province of Ontario, Canada. They considered this their original homeland. After the 17th century, they also settled along the Ottawa River, and in the present-day states of Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as through the Midwest south of the Great Lakes in what became the United States. In the 21st century, there are approximately 15,000 Odawa living in Ontario, and Michigan and Oklahoma (former Indian Territory, United States). The Ottawa dialect is part of the Algonquian language family. This large family has numerous smaller tribal groups or bands, commonly called a Tribe in the United States and First Nation in Canada. Their language is considered a divergent dialect of Ojibwe, characterized by frequent syncope. Jefferys, Thomas (1719 - 1771) Thomas Jefferys was one of the more prominent commercial cartographers in London during the middle of the eighteenth century. Although he was responsible for a wide variety of prints and for maps of much of the world, he is particularly remembered for his publication of many maps of North America, such as the Map of the Most Inhabited Part of New England (1755). Jefferys did not himself compile this map. Indeed, he was not a geographer per se. He was an engraver and publisher of maps which other people had compiled and drawn. In the ethically flexible map trade of the eighteenth century, he made a significant name for himself. Our first record of him is in 1732, when he reworked an existing copper plate for a map. Yet the recently examined records of the Merchant Taylors Company indicate that he apprenticed himself as an engraver to the map maker Emmanuel Bowen only in 1735.. This discrepancy remains unexplained. Thereafter, Jefferys career seems to have followed a normal trajectory. He worked as an engraver for a variety of London publishers, as when he engraved twenty maps for Edward Caves Gentlemans Magazine after 1746. He increasingly originated his own projects, although the need for capital required him to enter into partnerships with other engraver/publishers. During this period Jefferys worked in the east end of London, home of the Hackney scribblers. The profits from such business eventually allowed him to set up shop for himself. In 1750 Jefferys acquired new and larger premises in the far more reputable district of Charing Cross, midway between the economic center of London and the governmental center of Westminster. In the same year, he also got married, a sure sign of his economic independence. In 1746, Jefferys received the Court appointment of geographer to Frederick, prince of Wales. This translated in 1757 to geographer to George, prince of Wales and later, with Georges accession to the throne in 1760, Jefferys became geographer to the king. Too much should not be made of these titles because they signified only the status of a favoured tradesman. The titles indicate that Jefferys was seen as a reputable publisher with a sufficiently large collection of maps to fill the princes, or kings, personal needs. They did not represent an official position sanctioned and salaried by the government. Government agencies used a variety of commercial cartographers to publish maps; the Board of Trade and Plantations employed Thomas Kitchin, for example, to engrave and publish John Mitchells Map of the British and French Dominions in North America (1755) We do not actually need to give Jefferys any special government privileges in order to explain his access to source materials. The British government was run in a rather unprofessional manner excepting the agencies of taxation and, perhaps, warfare and did not have strictly regulated flows of information; from the modern perspective, there was much leakage. Since 1688, a growing public demand for information about the condition of the state, driven as much by distrust of the ever-growing government as by the Enlightenment desire for statistics and economic data, had also loosened access to the archives and had led to the expectation that much government information was indeed to be published. Moreover, in an age when most government positions carried low salaries, it was expected that officials would be able to use the products of their service to their own benefit; many maps made by colonial officials were thus sent to Londons commercial cartographers at the instigation of the original surveyors rather than of the government agencies, although the permission of the latter was usually required. James Cook was able, for example, to publish some of his charts of Newfoundland under his own. The result is that eighteenth-century cartographers like Thomas Jefferys would already have had available to them a wide array of government information even without the benefit of any special access to official archives. What Jefferys titles as geographer to the prince/king certainly did was to increase his status and business as a geographical publisher; as such, he would have been given first offer by government officials or by individuals of manuscripts to be engraved and published, and his profits would have given him greater opportunity to take advantage of the more publicly available materials. Ultimately, special relationships would have evolved, as they did between Jefferys and the Board of Trade and Plantations in the 1760s but such relationships did not translate into any official status or guarantee of business. The dramatic rise in map production and demand occasioned by the Seven Years War (1756-63) the Anglo-French struggle fought in Europe, North America (as the French and Indian War), South Asia, and across the oceans in between gave Jefferys business a massive boost. The cost of acquiring his source maps was likely low; at worst Jefferys would have had to pay a draftsman for taking a copy of a map or he would have had to give a portion of his profits to the map maker. His costs would have been mostly related to production; Harley has estimated that he employed about twelve draftsmen and engravers in his Charing Cross premises. The profits would likely have been relatively high. Demand for maps of North America seems to have dropped off somewhat with the end of the war and the pattern of Jefferys cartographic practice changed rapidly. He continued to print maps of the colonies and of foreign territories from his existing plates, but in his new work he emphasized the large-scale surveys of English counties. This was a vital and quite innovative arena of cartographic activity and Jefferys saw it as a new business opportunity. Not only would he receive profits from the sale of such maps, there was also the chance of receiving a prize of £100 offered by the Society of Arts after 1759 for each county survey of sufficient quality. Such county surveys bore a heavy cost in addition to the expenses of engraving and printing the final maps: good surveyors commanded good wages; expensive instruments had to be bought; the surveyors and their staffs had to be transported, fed, and housed in the field for many months. Harley cites the example of a 1766-69 survey of Northumberland that cost £350; the total cost of Benjamin Donns 1765 map of Devon was nearly £2,000. Much of these expenses were covered by subscriptions, but the surveys organizer would still incur a substantial capital outlay. Harleys evidence also suggests that sales of county maps were high when first published but they quickly dropped off thereafter and did not provide the sort of long-term income generated by smaller-scale chorographic maps. Despite this troubling economic picture, Jefferys embarked on an ambitious plan to survey several counties. Bedfordshire was surveyed and published in 1765; his survey of Nottinghamshire was judged too inaccurate to publish and so was a complete write-off; he attempted surveys of no less than three more counties in 1766. Harley persuasively argues that Jefferys bankruptcy in November 1766 was not coincidental. Jefferys quite simply had insufficient capital for his surveys. His bankruptcy forced Jefferys into a partnership with Robert Sayer, a successful publisher of a diverse range of materials. Sayer provided the capital to reprint many of Jefferys existing plates and presumably took the larger share of the profits. Of particular interest here is the publication by Sayers and Jefferys of Jefferys General Topography. This put in one volume a large collection of 93 maps and charts in 106 sheets; several of the older maps were updated for this publication, perhaps to enhance sales. After Jefferys died in 1771, Sayer bought up more of Jefferys plates and with a new partner, John Bennett, published several new editions of them. Most notable of these publications was the American Atlas of 1775 or 1776 (Jefferys 1775). This was a smaller and more selective collection of North American maps only 23 maps on 29 plates than the General Topography had proffered a few years before. Boosted by the American Revolution, the American Atlas was certainly a greater commercial success; it was reprinted in 1776 (i.e., 1777), 1778, and 1782. All the plates were old Jefferys stock and the atlas was described on the title page as being by Jefferys. This highly popular work generated the great majority of surviving copies of the Map of the Most Inhabited Part of New England, in its third edition (November 1774) After Jefferys death, his son Thomas Jr. (born 1755) tried to continue the business. He seems not to have been successful and, in 1773, he entered into a partnership with William Faden. Fadens capital stake was probably provided by his father, a very successful printer. The partnership of Jefferys and Faden was dissolved in 1776, at which time Faden took sole possession of the Charing Cross property and began to publish under his own name. Faden took advantage of the American Revolution to build up for himself a highly profitable mapping business. Unlike his former partners father, Faden would not squander his profits. What is an Antique Map The word Antique in the traditional sense refers to an item that is more than a hundred years old. In the past maps were sold in two forms, as a single sheet (broadsheet) or bound in an atlas or book. The majority of antique maps for sale today come from books or atlases and have survived due to the protection offered by the hardback covers. When considering a purchase The first thing to determine when staring a collection or purchasing an item, is what is important to you. Most collectors prefer to build their collections around a theme. You may decide to collect maps from one region or country, charting its development through time. Similarly you could collect maps of one particular period in time, by type (i.e. sea or celestial charts) or by cartographer. The collector might also want to consider the theme of cartographical misconceptions such as California as an island or Australia as Terra Australis or the Great Southern Land. 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Price: 125 USD

Location: Ivanhoe, VIC

End Time: 2024-02-10T09:43:52.000Z

Shipping Cost: 9.99 USD