Private Collection of Over 500 Travel & Discovery Atlases and Narratives Coming up at Christie’s
New York - Christie’s is pleased to announce the sale of rare books and manuscripts Ex Libris Jean R. Perrette: Important Travel, Exploration, and Cartography on April 5, 2016 in New York.
With over 500 lots, this private collection is focused on the landmark works of travel and exploration from the 15th through the 19th century. Included are atlases, travel narratives, and records of explorations and discovery around the globe.
Highlights comprise some of the rarest examples of early cartography, such as the augmented edition of the first great printed atlas, the Ulm Ptolemy (lot 8), with the maps colored, and including the famous world map showing the north Atlantic; the Blaeu's Atlas Major 1662 (lot 45), the largest and most expensive atlas hitherto produced with 11 volumes bound in publishers’ vellum and finely colored; and Waghenaer’s Speculum Nauticum 1586 (lot 28) the first of the great maritime atlases.
Other works of note document significant voyages and discoveries across the globe from extensive representations of the New World, including a significant group of works by Samuel de Champlain, to early East-West interactions with Asia, among them rare Chinese and Japanese language manuscripts and atlases.
About Jean R. Perrette:
Hailing from Breton, the westernmost region of France and home to expert navigational sailors, it is fitting that Jean R. Perrette had an interest in exploration. With this heritage, Mr. Perrette embarked nearly fifty years ago to build a collection of some of the earliest printed cartography and records that document the most renowned moments of voyage and discovery—including first encounters with the then mysterious regions of the Far East and the New World.
Mr. Perrette's books now return to the market, to encourage other collectors and collections to follow a similar voyage, offering a chance to acquire many of the most important books that record the journeys of those who charted the surface of the world, to re-live the whole process of discovery.
Image: CHAMPLAIN, Samuel de (1567-1635) Les Voyages de la Nouvelle France occidentale, dite Canada faits par le Sr Champlain Xainctogeois, Paris: Claude Collet, 1640. [320] Estimate: $150,000-250,000. Courtesy of Christie's.
