Map from Downtown Brown Books, ABAA

[San Francisco]: Towne & Bacon, Printers, 1860. Ephemera. Very good. A very unusual promotional real estate map for San Francisco's Castro district. While this map has been described as a lithograph (see PBA Galleries, April 21, 2022), it is actually letterpress printed entirely from type (the bite of the type can be distinctly felt on the verso of… Read more about this item

[Kyoto]: Yakichi Hachioya (sometimes Hachidaiya) [八大屋弥吉], 1863. Ephemera. Near fine. The third edition of this woodblock map of Kyoto, at the time the Imperial seat (the emperor moved to Tokyo in 1868). The map depicts a traditional street grid for the center of the city, with relief shown pictorially around the map edges. North is to the left,… Read more about this item

Osaka and Edo: Kawachiya Kihe et al. and Eirakuya Toshiro, 1837. Second Edition. Trade paperback. Good. This is the second edition of one of the crowning achievements of Japanese Edo-period mapmaking, a five-color woodblock atlas of the provinces of Japan. The maps are printed in light blue, dark blue, black, yellow, and red and mark administrative divisions (villages,… Read more about this item