Antique Map of China (Imperii Sinarum), 1697

The story of this map

Philipp Clüver’s Introductio in universam geographiam was the geography textbook of seventeenth-century Europe, reprinted for a century after his death, and the Amsterdam edition of 1697 was fitted out with a new set of small copperplate maps. Tab. 37 is China: Imperii Sinarum Nova Descriptio, the empire from the Great Wall to the island of Hainan, on a sheet only twenty by twenty-five centimetres.

Small as it is, the map is a faithful reduction of the best knowledge Europe had — Martino Martini’s Jesuit survey of China, published by Blaeu in 1655 — with the fifteen provinces named, the wall drawn as a crenellated line across the north, Korea shown correctly as a peninsula, and the coast of Tonkin running off to the south-west. Japan is cut at the right edge, as it usually was on China sheets.

The Library of Congress scan is 5,352 pixels wide, enough for 24×24 inches at 223 dots per inch — roughly six times the original — and the engraved line holds up: at that size the hatching of the mountains and the lettering of the provinces are as legible as on the page. The stamp and pencil marks of the Library’s copy are kept.

Printed to order on archival matte paper, framed in the country of delivery. The nearly square plate floats on an aged-paper margin at rectangular sizes.

Before and after

Left: the archive scan exactly as published. Right: the file that goes to the printer.

Archive scanRestored

Restoration notes

Restoration: cropped the scanner bed and mount margins, corrected levels and colour cast while keeping the paper tone, removed dust and specks, applied gentle sharpening. Fold lines, stains and period annotations are kept where they belong to the object; nothing is redrawn.

Every print carries its archive credit on the packing slip. Paper tone and small imperfections of the original are kept on purpose; nothing is redrawn.