First published in 1587, in Strabo’s ‘Geographicarum Libr 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.

Rumold Mercator’s map is based on his father’s great world map of 1569, of which only three copies survive today. The engraving is a model of clarity and neatness with typical cursive flourishes to the lettering of the sea names. Surrounding the hemispheres is a strapwork border; between them at the top is an armillary sphere and at the bottom, an elaborate compass rose.

In the Western Hemisphere, like its 1562 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.

Rumold Mercator (1541–1599) was the son of the famous cartographer 

. He completed a number of unfinished projects following his father's death and added new materials of his own research. Rumold Mercator rose to fame in his father's wake in 1587 when he published a copy of his father's Ptolemaic map of the world from 1569, revised in its overall graphic design.

In 1595, a year after his father's death, Rumold Mercator published a supplement of thirty-four maps to his father's ‘Tabulae Geographicae’. It contains twenty-nine maps, engraved by Gerard of the missing parts of Europe (Iceland, the British Isles and the Northern and Eastern European countries).

To complete the map collection quickly, Rumold Mercator added his own world map from 1587 and had four maps of the continents from his father's large world map from 1569 copied by his nephews Gerard and Michael, sons of Arnold Mercator. The title page was also an emergency solution: it is the title of the Ptolemy edition of 1578, on which the new title was pasted in letterpress.

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.

A superb example, with deep rich contemporary hand-colour in full, of the only available world map with direct involvement from 

, the greatest geographer of his era. Despite being based on Mercator’s great wall map of 1569 which introduced his eponymous 

, his son, Rumold has chosen to present the world as two hemispheres.

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

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