Frieze Abu Dhabi
We’re exhibiting at the inaugural Frieze Abu Dhabi with a selection exploring centuries of travel and trade across the Indian Ocean. Manuscripts, maps, and illustrated books trace the maritime routes connecting Arabia with East Africa, India, and Southeast Asia, including Ibn Battuta’s account of his travels and early descriptions of the Gulf pearl trade.
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MANUEL I; Pedro Alfonso Malheiro (ed.). Gesta proxime per Portugalenses in India, Ethiopia, et aliis orientalibus terris.Rome : 1506
Rare first edition of an early account of Portuguese imperial expansion in the Indian Ocean, documenting campaigns in East Africa and India. Published in Rome in 1506, it brought news of Portugal's overseas achievements to a European readership while its maritime empire was taking shape.
The account describes the military operations of 1505... Learn More -
FRACANZANO DA MONTALBODDO. Itinerarium Portugallensium e Lusitania in Indiam et inde in occidentem et demum ad aquilonem.Milan : 1508
First Latin edition of Montalboddo's pioneering collection of voyages, translated from the Italian edition of 1507 by Arcangelo Madrignani. Its title-page woodcut is among the earliest separately printed maps of Africa. It shows the continent's complete coastline, with Arabia, India, and a prominently named Calicut beyond it. This copy has the... Learn More -
SACROBOSCO, Johannes de, & Georg von Peuerbach. Opusculum de sphaera.Vienna : 1518
A profusely annotated copy of the scarce first and only Viennese edition, featuring a world map based on Waldseemüller's design, where part of America is visible. Compiled by a university student, the marginalia enrich the text with arithmetic, geography, astronomy, literature, and technical knowledge.
An online institutional search... Learn More -
POLO, Marco. Libro de las cosas maravillosas que vido en las partes orientales:Logroño : 1529
Third edition in Spanish, the earliest feasibly obtainable in that language, of the book that gave European readers one of the most detailed accounts of India up to that time, and the first extensive and coherent description of China in a Western language. In addition to information on the geography, politics, and society of distant lands, he also... Learn More -
DE BRY, Johann Theodor & Johann Israel. Petits Voyages, Parts I-XII and the rare Appendix, in Latin.Frankfurt : 1598-1628
First Latin editions, with five leaves in Part I supplied from the second edition, of a major illustrated collection of voyages to Africa and Asia, centred on the trading world of the Indian Ocean. The Petits Voyages document the maritime routes linking eastern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula with India and the East Indies, recording the... Learn More -
LINSCHOTEN, Jan Huyghen van. His Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies.London : 1598
First edition in English, a foundational work in European knowledge of India and the East, instrumental in opening the Indian Ocean to Dutch and English commercial expansion. This handsome copy is extra-illustrated with 30 plates from the first Dutch edition of 1596.
The book's detailed map of the Arabian peninsula and India places Arabia... Learn More -
DUDLEY, Robert. Arcano del mare.Florence : 1661
Second, corrected and enlarged edition of the first sea atlas of the world, "arguably the most sumptuous ever produced" (Burden). Dudley's Arcano del mare was the first sea atlas in which all the charts were constructed using the Mercator projection, the first to give magnetic deviation, prevailing winds, and currents, and the first to explain the... Learn More -
HOOKE, Robert. Micrographia:London : 1665
First edition, first issue, William Kirby's copy, acquired by him at the sale of Lord Cornwallis's library at Brome Hall in 1811, of Hooke's landmark work, "probably the most influential book in the entire history of microscopy" (Norman). Using his refined compound microscope, Hooke was the first to use the word "cell" in a biological context,... Learn More -
NEWTON, Isaac. Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica.London : 1687
First edition, first issue, of the crowning work of the Scientific Revolution. The Principia represents the first great unification of modern science, presenting Newton's three laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation.
Where Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler had described the phenomena they observed, Newton explained the underlying... Learn More -
WILLIAMSON, Thomas, & Samuel Howitt. Oriental Field Sports;London : 1807
A superlative copy with pre-publication watermarks of the rare first edition of "the most beautiful book on Indian sport in existence" (Schwerdt) and justifiably described by the distinguished art historian Martin Hardie as "one of the finest series of sporting plates ever published".
The vivacious Samuel Howitt was a self-taught artist who... Learn More -
DANIELL, Samuel. A Picturesque Illustration of the Scenery, Animals, and Native Inhabitants, of the Island of Ceylon;London : 1808 & 1831
Two major colour plate books by Samuel Daniell (1775–1811), bound together: the first edition of A Picturesque Illustration of the Island of Ceylon (1808) and Robert Havell's rare 1831 reissue of African Scenery and Animals. The latter is more richly coloured than the original edition, as Thomas Sutton observed; Tooley calls the reissue... Learn More -
MOOR, John Henry. Notices of the Indian Archipelago, and Adjacent Countries;Singapore : 1837
First edition of one of the earliest books published in Singapore, comprising articles first published in the Singapore Chronicle, Singapore's first newspaper, between 1824 and 1834. The proposed second part was never published. The work preserves material otherwise lost, as no copies of the Chronicle are known to survive from 1824 to 1826.... Learn More -
DARWIN, Charles; Robert FitzRoy; Phillip Parker King. Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle,London : 1839
First edition, a very well-preserved copy in the original cloth, of this outstanding account of natural history exploration. It includes the first issue of Darwin's first published book, the Journal and Remarks (now popularly known under its later title The Voyage of the Beagle), which describes the fieldwork that ultimately led to the publication... Learn More -
JAFFREY, Phoebe. Darjeeling Ferns.Darjeeling, West Bengal : 1882
A superb and uncommon hortus siccus of ferns from West Bengal, compiled and mounted by Phoebe Jaffrey, wife of Andrew Thomas Jaffrey, the founding curator in 1878 of the Lloyd Botanic Gardens in Darjeeling. This copy has been copiously expanded by a later British amateur botanist, with a huge number of samples added both within and... Learn More -
DELHI DURBAR 1903; BOURNE & SHEPHERD. The Coronation Durbar 1903.Calcutta, Simla, and Bombay : 1903
First edition; a superb visual celebration of the magnificent durbar that marked the accession of Edward VII and Queen Alexandra as Emperor and Empress of India. Lasting two weeks, the event was "marked by displays of unexampled magnitude... [eclipsing] the splendours of the vanished Empire of the Moghuls" (introduction), culminating in a... Learn More -
KIPLING, Rudyard - DETMOLD, Maurice & Edward J. (illus.). Sixteen Illustrations of Subjects from Kipling's "Jungle Book".London : 1903
First edition, sole impression. Macmillan issued this sumptuous portfolio at five guineas, advertising the illustrations as reproductions "in colour from the Original Drawings in the highest style of Lithography". The 16 watercolours had been exhibited at the Dutch Gallery in London and were subsequently incorporated, in reduced format, into... Learn More
