SIBERIA

Siberie, Carte Geographique contenant le Royaume de, (subdivided in three provinces, namely Tobolsk, Jenissejesk, Irkutsk, and outer parts of the Tartary). With miles indicator, a small map of the Chukchi (Chukotsk) Peninsular (ca. 4 x 8 cm), annotations to the districts and

a  large  figurative  coloured  title-cartouche

(19.3 x 22 cm) with a stylized icicle, steppe landscape with reindeer sledge, whale and polar bears, one of them devouring a fish. On top of it six winds. Coloured two-sheet-map ca. 1 : 13 millions engraved by Matthäus Albrecht Lotter (1741 Augsburg 1810) for Tobias Conrad Lotter (1717 Augsburg 1777). Ca. 1770-1780.

Guide to the cartographic history of the imperial city of Augsburg, in Imago Mundi XXII, 85 ff. – Not in the British Library and the Library of Congress. – In the right white upper margin numbered with “121” by old hand. – The two sides trimmed on or just inside the wide platemark.

In regard of a dating the existence of Lotter’s publishing house from 1758 till 1810, the year of Matthäus Albrecht L.’s death, gives the utmost frame. The last map of T. Lotter quoted by Grenacher – supposedly the publishing house is meant – dates from already 1796 however, the last maps of the Lotter family Tooly records even from 1787-88, whereby under the latter date he ascribes a map of Russia to Tobias Conrad L. passed away already in 1777.

A more exact dating with c. 1770-80 seems possible on the base of several hints partially evident from the map itself. So for once about 1770 a map of Siberia by Ivan Fomic Truscot (1721-1786, comp. BMC XXII, 353) was published, that, however, comprised the West Siberian states Tobolsk and Yeniseiesk only, but may have been quite available to Lotter, just as also the German edition of the third Russian general map by Truscot and Jacob F. Schmidt of 1776 was published by Lotter in 1784.

The comparison of the Asian northeastern coast from Japan up to Cape Szalaginskoi (Cape Shelagskiy) together with the offshore islands there results in an astonishing similarity with representation and designation on Rigobert Bonne’s maps of Russia and the Chinese Tartary published by Lattré in Paris in 1771. Especially striking the form of Sakhalin that hitherto – but also still on the Truscot map of 1776 – appears far more stocky, here though shows a slimmer shape considerably closer to reality. Cape Patience known at least since the 1743 Utrecht edition of the map of Russia by Johann Matthias Haas (Augsburg 1684 – Wittenberg/Augsburg 1742) – Kaert van Het geheele Russische Keizerryk – already published by Homann Heirs in Nuremberg in 1730 + 39 here supposedly for the first time shown in unity with Sakhalin and, as the long-stretched southern half beginning west of the cape already recognizable there is missing here, together forming its southern tip.

Of great similarity, too, the still completely bulky representation of Jeso (= Hokkaido), filling up large parts of the Sea of Japan as known sufficiently from numerous, though by far not all maps of the 18^th century. The Kuriles adjacent in northeastern direction – with rich detail designation, but without the denomination as chain of islands appearing at least in the 1784 edition of the Trescot map – with the obscure islands Terre des Etat (Iturup) and Terre de la Compagnie. Both, as also the often furthermore adjacent da Gama Land, had been supposedly finally left by Trescot to the memory of the great time of sometimes only vague discoveries.

Interestingly both islands are designated with hints to Russian maps in question marks. This probably to be seen as a sign for an independent work of Lotter who obviously drew his knowledge from different sources and not just copied a map he had got into his hands for a German edition.

Further clue to the dating is, too, the taking over of the Chukchi (Chukotsk) Peninsula in the farest northeast of Asia in the shape practically unchanged since Ivan Kirilov’s (1695 – Samara 1737) general map of 1734 – the first Russian one at all. For at the latest since publishing the Trescot map of 1776 in 1784 Lotter would have known the new shape valid till today. With regard to the independence of his work a recourse to older forms of representation appears little likely.

Designed in cone projection, the null meridian runs about 020° western longitude of Greenwich through the centre of Iceland. In the west reaching till Nowaja Semlja – Ural Mountains – Kazan – Sea of Azov, the map comprises in the far east still northern Japan , the Kuriles and Kamchatka . Southerly still with at the Caspian Sea , Lake Aral , the headwaters of the Yenisey , the Dalej Nuur in northern Mongolia near to the wall of Genghis Chan , the region of today’s Vladivostok and the Tsugari Street . In the Arctic Ocean up to 78° northern latitude. And so not just a fine example for

(Lothar Zögner), but also and quite especially an

Offer no. 12,019 / EUR  2403. / Export price EUR  2283. (c. US$ 3334.) + shipping

“ The map was packaged very well and I am impressed about your professionally too. I look forward to having business with you again ”

(Sign. S. B. F., June 26, 2004)