1680 Moses Pitt North Pole Map
GUEST: This is a piece that we picked up at an estate sale back in the late '90s--’97, ‘98. When my wife and I went into the estate sale, they had these three lithographs, and she was interested in 'em. Come got me, and said, "Hey, come look at these." I said, "Eh, let's don't do that." They was wanting $300 a piece. And I didn't want to pay the $900 for 'em, so we left. I got home, and I got to thinking about it, and she was really excited about these lithographs, so I went back and bought 'em.
APPRAISER: How much did you pay for them?
GUEST: Well, I offered them $300 for the three. They took my offer, and so then I took 'em home and hid them in the attic of the house for about a month, until Mother's Day.
APPRAISER: Aw.
GUEST: And then I brought 'em out, gave them to the kids, and let them present them to their mom.
APPRAISER: (chuckling): Oh. Well, the map we're looking at today it isn't what it seems. So it's a map of the North Pole and adjoining areas, and it was printed in what they call it Oxon, which is the, um, Latinized name for Oxford. So it was printed in England, and it's by Moses Pitt. His name's on the bottom here, And the map was dedicated to Charles FitzCharles, who was the illegitimate son of Charles II, who was the king of England at the time.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: Um, but if you look at it, is it really a map of the North Pole? Because they did not map the North Pole. They didn't reach the North Pole until the 20th century. Instead, what this is a map of is the search for the Northwest Passage and the Northeast Passage. So you can see here, on the Canadian part of the map, there are all these entrances that lead to nowhere, to parts unknown. Moses Pitt wasn't interested in mapping the Arctic. He was interested in Asia. He was looking for the quicker way to get to the Spice Islands. And everyone was exploring the area, trying to find the Northwest Passage. On the other side, by Scandinavia and Iceland, it's the same thing. They're looking for the Northeast Passage, another quick way to get to Asia. When explorers were looking for the Northeast Passage, they discovered Nova Zembla, which was an island in the Arctic Circle. Although the map is called North Pole, it's not really a map of the North Pole, because there's nothing there. So that-that's what makes this map really, really important. This map is dated. It's printed in 1680. There weren't that many English maps or charts of the area. The Dutch dominated the map trade, so he took upon this ambitious project to make a giant atlas of the world based on Dutch maps. So he borrowed or used other map makers' designs to come up with his English atlas. And at the time, there was no copyright, so, you know, anyone could print anyone else's maps. But it was such a big project that he eventually went bankrupt and ended up in debtors' prison. This one in particular, he designed himself. He didn't steal from a Dutch mapmaker, and it has some wonderful details in the cartouche. We have an Inuit family with an architectural structure and a depiction of a kayak in the background. On the other side, we have, presumably, English fishermen hunting narwhals and whales. It's a wonderful, dynamic, big design in comparison to the map. And the reason he designed it that big was because it was literally parts unknown. So he tried to cover up what he didn't know by that beautiful image.
GUEST: (chuckles)
APPRAISER: The map isn't a lithograph, it's an engraving. And the engraving was made from a plate and laid and colored by hand. It has some original
color. And then here, the, the blue is, um, uh, possibly added later. Looks to me added in the 1970s. That doesn't affect the value of the map because of the rarity. I'd put a retail value on it, in a gallery setting, between $4,000 and $6,000.
GUEST: Wow, that's a... nice return on investment.
APPRAISER: Agreed.
GUEST: And what a-- what an educational piece. It's amazing. Thank you for that.
APPRAISER: Glad you went back to the sale to get it for your wife.
GUEST: (laughs) I am, too.
$4,000 - $6,000 Retail
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