Search Results: Titles starting with L from BICKERSTAFF'S BOOKS, MAPS &C.

The Time-Honored Tradition of Statue Toppling... NYC, 1776This is a marvelous example of a vue d'optique or "perspective view" that was a form of visual entertainment in Europe in the latter half of the 18th century. These views were often fanciful; this one, at least, represents a real historical event: the toppling of a statute of King George III in New York City. On July 10, 1776, a public reading of the new Declaration of Independence aroused the Sons of Liberty to such an extent that they tore down the statue of the King which had been erected in 1770 on the Bowling Green at the foot of Broadway. Reference: cf, Cresswell: The American Revolution in Drawings and Prints: 263. [ICN 7650.]

Striking Pictorial Map of the WorldThis striking pictorial world map was issued as part of a promotion by the French chocolatier, Menier, in 1956. The richly illustrated and colorful map traces a trip around the world to 120 locations by the company's mascot, Jacqueline. The small illustrations are of place-specific flora and fauna, native costumes, architecture, etc. The map contains three insets: Israel, India and the Belgian Congo.

Customers collected (120) coupons that accompanied chocolate bars and affixed them to the respective spots on the grid below the map, then submitted the completed form to the Menier company for a premium or entry into a contest. As a result, the map is often seen with the lower panel missing.

J.B. Jannot, who sometimes used the pen name Jan-Loup, was a French artist, illustrator and cartoonist. Jannot did a similar map of Europe ("Grand Circuit des Capitales"), also for Menier, at about the same time.

Reference: Rumsey Map Collection: List No:… Read More

A rare broadside by a remarkably talented 19th century Maine clergyman

Jonathan Fisher (1768-1847) served as the pastor of the Blue Hill Congregational Church in Maine for 41 years. He was very much a Maine Renaissance man of the first half of the nineteenth century: clergyman, author, poet, surveyor, inventor, artist (portrait and landscape painter), naturalist, teacher, wood engraver and farmer. Fisher is probably best known for his Scripture Animals, an 1834 work that "is a delightful synthesis of his theology, natural observations and skill as a wood engraver," as described in Sprague's The Mirror of Maine.
Fisher's broadside depicts and documents the hanging of Ebenezer Ball on October 13, 1811 for the murder of John Tileston Downes, who was attempting to arrest Ball on suspicion of counterfeiting. Ball, of Robbinston, was the first person hanged in Eastern Maine.
The broadside exists in two editions – the first, printed in late 1811 in a total of 400 copies, and this second – and… Read More

Family Register of Seward Porter, circa 1800A nicely accomplished, though primitive, family register of the Seward and Eleanor Porter family. Two colorful plants with birds in their top branches fill the sides of the register. At the top hover two angel-like figures, one bearing an hour glass, the other blowing a horn.
Seward and Eleanor Porter were from Weymouth, Massachusetts, but relocated to Falmouth in the District of Maine in about 1777, and then to Freeport in about 1782. This family register lists the names, birth places and birth dates of the Porter's 13 children from 1778 to 1797.
Their fourth son on the list -- also named Seward Porter -- would become a prominent Maine mariner and entrepreneur. He brought the first steamboat to Maine in 1823. In 1837 he published a now-highly-prized set of charts of the Maine coast. For Seward Porter (the son), see:
Tooley's Dictionary of Mapmakers: Vol 3, p. 453, and Guthorn, United States Coastal Charts 1783-1861: p. 29. Condition: Approximately… Read More