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1679 First Edition Tavernier Map of Japan with Sea of Korea
Japan-tavernier-1679The map, which is on a fairly large scale, contains comments about the nature of the country. For instance, Ocasaqui (Okazaki, near Nagoya) is said to have the most beautiful women - 'C'est ou sont les plus belles femmes du pays.' Lake Bi wa is said to be where one can catch 'quantité de saumons.' Mount Fuji is described as 'Fusino-omma, montagne toujours couverte de neige.' An island, which could be Tsushima, off the coast of Kyushu is described as 'l'Isle ou on envoie la jeunesse, qui ne veut rien valoir et ou on les fait travailler par force, jusqu' a ce que leur proches les en retire' (the island where worthless youths are sent and made to work until their relations remove them)! Tavernier marked three places where there were alleged to be silver mines.
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605 - 1689) was a French gem merchant, traveler, and adventurer active in India and East Asia in the middle part of the 17th century. Tavernier was born in Paris of a French or Flemish Huguenot family that had emigrated to Antwerp, to escape persecution, and which subsequently returned to Paris after the publication of the Edict of Nantes, which promised protection for French Protestants. Tavernier had a family connection to mapmaking as both his father Gabriel and his uncle Melchior were cartographers and engravers. Nonetheless, despite a natural talent for drawing and engraving, he had an insatiable wanderlust and instead traveled independently to India and Asia where he made his fortune in the gem trade. Tavernier made a total of six voyages to Persia, India, and Asia between 1630 and 1668. Tavernier is best known for the discovery/purchase of the 116-carat Tavernier Blue diamond that he subsequently sold to Louis XIV of France in 1668 for 120,000 livres, the equivalent of 172,000 ounces of pure gold, and a letter of ennoblement. (Five years later, Louis had his court jeweler Jean Pitau recut the stone into the 68 carat French Blue and had it set as a hatpin. The gem was reset by his great-grandson Louis XV in The Medal of The Order of the Golden Fleece, stolen in 1792, and was recut and re-emerged in London 30 years later as The Hope Diamond). A wealthy man from his adventures, Tavernier acquired the Barony of Aubonne, and settled into a life of leisure wherein, to occupy himself he published a narrative of his voyages, along with two maps, as Les Six Voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1676). Tavernier died in Moscow in 1689, at the age of eighty-four. There is a persistent and most likely false legend that he died from being torn apart by wild dogs as a result of a curse on the Tavernier Blue (Hope Diamond). He one of three brothers of the French merchant adventurer Daniel Tavernier who also made numerous voyages to East Asia. More by this mapmaker...
Jean Louis Durant (1654–1718) was a Swiss-born engraver active in Paris in the 1670s and 1680s. He engraved maps of Vietnam and Japan, and many of the plates for J. B. Tavernier's Recueil de plusieurs relations et traitez singuliers et curieux. Learn More...
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This copy is copyright protected.
Copyright © 2024 Geographicus Rare Antique Maps