This map was first published in 1587, in Strabo’s ‘Geographicarum Libr XVII’ (‘Geographica: Book XVII’) with text beneath the map headed 'Lectori S.P.', and no text on the verso. It was another eight years before it appeared in a Mercator atlas in 1595 and again in 1602 before the plate was acquired by Jodocus Hondius. The Hondius family continued to issue the map unchanged until the 1630s despite increasing damage to the copper plate. This degradation can be seen in the two cracks to the title banner and in the prominent crack in East Africa extending down to the southern continent.

The hemispheres on this map are surrounded by a beautiful strapwork border; between them, an armillary sphere at the top, and at the bottom an elaborate compass rose. In the Western Hemisphere, like its 1569 source map, South America retains its characteristic bulge while Tierra del Fuego forms part of a gigantic southern continent that continues in the Eastern Hemisphere. Quivira, south of Anian, refers to the Seven Cities of Gold sought by the Spanish explorer, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in 1541. In 1539, Coronado wandered over what today is Arizona and New Mexico, eventually heading to what is now Kansas to find the supposedly gold-rich city of Quivira. The name stuck on maps of southwest North America, wandering from east to west. In the Eastern Hemisphere, Japan appears as a large round island. The islands of Southeast Asia are arrayed with relative accuracy for the time. To the south, the names of Beach, Maletur, and Lucach reveal Rumold Mercator’s use of toponyms from Marco Polo. Farther east on the southern continent is Psitacorum regio, the ‘Kingdom of Parrots’ which appeared on 

’s 1541 globe and his 1569 world map. It was supposed to have been sighted by Portuguese sailors.

Double-page copperplate engraved double-hemisphere map of the world, with contemporary hand-colour in full.

This beautiful world map was carved by Rumold Mercator, the son of the hugely influential cartographer 

's famous wall map in which he introduced the radical new '

'. However, in this map Rumold Mercator chose to represent the world in a more traditional double hemisphere.

Rumold engraved this world map on copper. It was first printed in Strabo's '

' in 1587 and dedicated to 'Sir Richard Gartho [sic], a lover and the greatest supporter of Geography and the other fine arts, in true friendship and with fond memories'. It appeared again in 1595 in a Mercator atlas with a second edition printed in 1602, after which the copper plate was acquired by Jodocus Hondius. The Hondius family continued to issue the map unchanged until the 1630s.

Rumold Mercator’s map is based on his father’s great world map of 1569, of which only three copies survive today. 

’s projection was one of the great intellectual inventions of the sixteenth century that solved the ancient problem of how to map the spherical earth onto a flat sheet of paper, while preserving the bearings of the compass as straight lines. His three-volume collection of maps was the first to use the word ‘atlas’. Of note is that both cartographers engraved their own plates. This particular copperplate was used for an edition of Strabo’s ‘Geographica’ in 1587 and was then featured in Rumold Mercator’s own atlas of 1595.

A brief description of the terrestrial earth, which is from the great world [map] of Gerard Mercator

Orbis Terrae Compendiosa Descriptio Quam ex Magna Universali Gerardi Mercatoris

The Mercator-Hondius World Map

Rumold Mercator undertook to make [this] for Sir Richard Gartho, a lover and the greatest supporter of Geography and the other fine arts, in true friendship and with fond memories, 1587

Domino Richardo Gartho, Geographic ac ceterarum bonarum artium amatori ac fautori summo, in veteris amicitie ac familiaritatis memoria Rumoldus Mercator fieri curabat A.o M.D. Lxxxvii