| Summary: | 17th century Copper engraving handcolored with watercolor. Full color. Relief shown pictorially. Printed in cartouche bottom left: "To Capt. John Wood this Map of the World Drawn acording to Mercators Projection is humbly Dedicated By Robt. Morden & Willm. Berry. Sold at ye Atlas in Cornhill & at ye Globe in ye Strand, London." Inset in upper left corner shows projection of North Pole. California is shown as an island. In the far northwest region of North America assumed coastline is shown as a dotted line and is marked as "Anian" showing a "Straite of Anian." The western port of current-day United States is shown as "Nova Granada." The Great Lakes are depicted as one lake and lack definition (Shirley, entry 472). Various illustrations of ships, whales and a figure riding a seamonster appear in the Pacific Ocean. Warring tribes and a village are depicted in current-day Brazil. The cartouche is decorated with illustrations of ships and a coat of arms with a wolf on it. Two compass roses appear with strong rhumb lines projecting outward from them. Australia is shown as "Holandia Nova" but its eastern area is blank as is northeastern Asia (Shirley, entry 472). South of Australia is "Ant. Van Dieman's land." Latin used for place names. East and west degrees of longitude are marked from Greenwich in the upper and lower corners in the border of the map. Scale c.a. 1:35,000,000. Robert Morden was a geographer and publisher for "The Atlas" in Cornhill. He worked with several cartographers including Thomas Cockerill, William Berry, Philip Lea, Christopher Browne, J. Overton, Paske, R. Green and R. Walton (Tooley, 448). Though never considered a great mapmaker and often "criticized" by others, he was well known for his Geographical Playing Cards with he produced with William Berry (1676) (Moreland and Bannister, 159). Among Morden's work are several large world maps published singly, "Plan of London" engraved by Hollar (1675), "Geography Rectified" (1680), "Globe" (1683), "Atlas Terrestris" (1695), Camden's "Britannia" (1695), "Sea Atlas" (1699), "London" (1700), and "New Description England" (1701). William Berry was a publisher and mapseller. He wrote a book on astronomy, published in 1669 with Robert Morden. He also helped produce Geographical Playing Cards with Morden in 1676. He is best known for producing large two-sheet maps that used the work of Nicolas Sanson. He also published "Mapp of all the World" (c.a. 1680) and a large road map of England and Wales by Hollar between 1669- and 1676. This particular map was a separate publication created in early 1676 prior to "the unsuccessful attempt of the dedicatee, John Wood, to force the north east passage in that year" (Shirley, entry 472). The map uses Mercator's projection and "contrasts" with the two-hemisphere project that was popular among Dutch and French cartographers. The coasts are based on the knowledge existing at that time and show large "blank" areas in northwestern North America, northeastern Asia and eastern Australia. California is shown as a peninsula and "Nova Zemlya" is also shown as a peninsula, drawing on a 1674 map by Nicolas Witsen. A later version of the map published in 1682 shows greater detail in New England (Shirley, entry 472). Source(s): Moreland, Carl and David Bannister. "Antique Maps: A Collector's Handbook." New York: Longman Group, Ltd., 1983. Shirley, Rodney W. "The Mapping of the World: Early Printed World Maps 1472-1700." Riverside, CT: Early World Press Ltd., 2001. Tooley, Ronald Vere. "Tooley's Dictionary of Mapmakers." Hertfordshire: Map Collector Publications Limited, 1979.
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