IRELAND 1846 JAMES WYLD OVERSIZE UNUSUAL ANTIQUE ORIGINAL COPPER ENGRAVED MAP

Description: Striking and highly detailed oversize original copper engraved map of Ireland.

The map divides Ireland into its historical provinces and counties, illustrating the great and cross roads, with distances marked from Dublin, the capital. This focus on roads and distances indicates the map's utility for travel and administrative purposes. Key features include major towns, geographical landmarks, and infrastructural elements such as roads, which were crucial for communication and trade.
 
The relief is shown by hachures, a technique used to indicate terrain elevations, which adds a three-dimensional aspect to the otherwise flat map. This method highlights the varying topography of Ireland and provides a sense of the landscape's physical features.
 
The map is not only informative but also aesthetically pleasing, with careful attention to detail in the representation of roads, towns, and county boundaries. The use of color to delineate provincial and county borders enhances readability and visual appeal.

Notable Features:
 
- Title and Inscriptions: The title is prominently displayed in the top left corner, indicating both the purpose of the map and its creator's credentials as a royal geographer. The inclusion of Faden's name and titles suggests the map's authority and reliability.
 
- Compass Rose: Situated in the lower right corner, the compass rose is a decorative yet functional element, aiding in navigation and orientation.
 
- Scale: The map includes a scale bar, which provides a reference for measuring distances. The scale is crucial for understanding the spatial relationships and distances between various points on the map.
 
- Borders and Colors: The use of color to demarcate provinces and counties helps differentiate the political divisions within Ireland. These borders are crucial for understanding the administrative geography of the time.
 
- Roads and Distances: The emphasis on roads and the marked distances from Dublin indicates the map's utility for travelers and officials. This feature would have been particularly valuable in the context of 18th-century Ireland, where infrastructure was key to economic and political activities.

Date: 1846 ( dated )

Dimension: Paper size approx.: cm 57,9 x 79,4

Condition: Very strong and dark impression on strong paper. Map old original colored. Small foxing and browning. Map folded. Conditions are as you can see in the images. 

Mapmakers: Wyld (1823 - 1893) was a British publishing firm active throughout the 19th century. It was operated by James Wyld I (1790 - 1836) and his son James Wyld II (November 20, 1812 - 1887) were the principles of an English mapmaking dynasty active in London during much of the 19th century. The elder Wyld was a map publisher under William Faden (1749 - 1836) and did considerable work on the Ordinance Survey. On Faden's retirement in 1823, Wyld took over Faden's workshop, acquiring many of his plates. Wyld's work can often be distinguished from his son's maps through his imprint, which he signed as 'Successor to Faden'. Following in his father's footsteps, the younger Wyld joined the Royal Geographical Society in 1830 at the tender age of 18. When his father died in 1836, James Wyld II was prepared to fully take over and expand his father's considerable cartographic enterprise. Like his father and Faden, Wyld II held the title of official Geographer to the Crown, in this case, Queen Victoria. In 1852, he moved operations from William Faden's old office at Charing Cross East (1837 - 1852) to a new, larger space at 475 Strand. Wyld II also chose to remove Faden's name from all of his updated map plates. Wyld II continued to update and republish both his father's work and the work of William Faden well into the late 1880s. One of Wyld's most eccentric and notable achievements is his 1851 construction of a globe 19 meters (60 feet) in diameter in the heart of Leicester Square, London. In the 1840s, Wyld also embarked upon a political career, being elected to parliament in 1847 and again in 1857. He died in 1887 following a prolific and distinguished career. After Wyld II's death, the family business was briefly taken over by James John Cooper Wyld (1844 - 1907), his son, who ran it from 1887 to 1893 before selling the business to Edward Stanford. All three Wylds are notable for producing, in addition to their atlas maps, short-run maps expounding upon important historical events - illustrating history as it was happening - among them are maps related to the California Gold Rush, the New South Wales Gold Rush, the Scramble for Africa, the Oregon Question, and more.

James Wyld Sr. (1790-1836) was a British cartographer and one of Europe’s leading mapmakers. He made many contributions to cartography, including the introduction of lithography into map printing in 1812.  William Faden, another celebrated cartographer, passed down his mapmaking business to Wyld in 1823. The quality and quantity of Faden’s maps, combined with Wyld’s considerable skill, brought Wyld great prestige. Wyld was named geographer to Kings George IV and William IV, as well as HRH the Duke of York. In 1825, he was elected an Associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He was one of the founding members of the Royal Geographical Society in 1830. Also in 1830, his son, James Wyld Jr., took over his publishing house. Wyld Sr. died of overwork on October 14, 1836. James Wyld Jr. (1812-87) was a renowned cartographer in his own right and he successfully carried on his father’s business. He gained the title of Geographer to the Queen and H.R.H. Prince Albert. Punch (1850) described him in humorous cartographic terms, “If Mr. Wyld’s brain should be ever discovered (we will be bound he has a Map of it inside his hat), we should like to have a peep at it, for we have a suspicion that the two hemispheres must be printed, varnished, and glazed, exactly like a pair of globes".

James Wyld (1812–1887) was a British geographer and map-seller, best known for Wyld's Great Globe. He was the eldest son of James Wyld the Elder (1790–1836) and Eliza (née Legg). In 1838, he married Anne, the daughter of John Hester, and had two children, one of whom, James John Cooper Wyld also became a map publisher. On his father's death in 1836, Wyld became the sole owner of the thriving family mapmaking business based in Charing Cross. His maps, which covered regions as diverse as London and the gold fields of California, were regarded highly, and Wyld himself had an excellent reputation as a mapmaker; he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1839, and he was appointed Geographer to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (as had been his father before him). He had an opportunistic approach to the business and was a prolific publisher of maps and guides (so much so that Punch claimed that if a country were discovered in the interior of the Earth Wyld would produce a map of it "as soon as it is discovered, if not before"), but his projects were not always successful; although he profited from the "Railway Mania" of the later 1830s, he became entangled in a number of court cases with unsuccessful railway companies as a result, and he overreached himself by printing maps and guides of the London rail network which included stations and connections that were planned but subsequently not built. He helped start both the Association of Surveyors and the Surveyors' Institution to lobby against the Ordnance Survey, as he felt its activities threatened his business, but when these associations failed, he pragmatically got his company appointed as one of the six official outlets for the new OS maps. He had an account at the Royal British Bank, which collapsed in 1856, wiping out the savings of many of the depositors, but the extent of his losses is not recorded. Wyld was the chairman of the depositors committee which managed to negotiate a favourable return of 15 shillings in the pound from the shareholders. He was also the Liberal MP for Bodmin, though his political career was on hiatus for much of the time that he managed the Great Globe. On his first election in 1848 there were charges of bribery at the polling stations, although it was decided that these accusations could not be substantiated, and he was allowed to take up his seat. His idea for the Great Globe had been many years in the formulation: a correspondent of Notes and Queries mentioned that as early as 1839, Wyld had broached the subject of a concave globe at a meeting to discuss an earlier giant globe project. This plan by William Vialls for a georama in London never progressed past the planning stage.