Beschreibung:

SARYCHEV, Gavril Andreevich (1763-1831). [ Puteshestvie Flota Kapitana Sarycheva po severovostochnoi chasti Sibiri, Ledovitnomu moriu i Vostochnomu okeanu . i.e. “The Journey of Fleet-Captain Sarychev through the Northeastern Regions of Siberia, the Arctic Sea and the Pacific Ocean”.] Atlas volume. [St. Petersburg: Shnor, 1802.] The very rare complete folio plate book ("atlas") for Sarychev’s exploration of the Russian North Pacific: the most important iconography and cartography of Alaska up to its time . This volume is complete with all 51 plates, and extra-illustrated with six plates from Sarychev’s 1811 publication (see lot 149). Complete copies of the plates volume are very rare: RBH records only one other sold at auction in the past 25 years: the Lada-Mocarski copy (sold, PBA, 29 October 2015, part of lot 78, together with the text, $138,000). Historically, there has been much confusion about the correct number of plates in a complete copy, and about whether the plates were conceived as an atlas or if they were intended to be bound within the text. Martin Greene conducted extensive research into these issues, and examined nearly every recorded example in institutions in the U.S. and Russia. Greene’s research showed conclusively that a complete set comprises 51 plates, and that these were made available to buyers after the text (in 1802-03) together in one volume without a separate title page. That they were issued without a title page strongly suggests that the publisher did not consider them to constitute a separate atlas as such. All the plates have printed page references, indicating that the publisher intended that buyers would bind these with the text. But very few did: only two copies are known with the plates bound into the text, one of them the Greene copy (see lot 144). Sarychev's is “one of the fundamental and very rare early books on the Aleutian Islands” (Lada-Mocarski). The expedition was sponsored by Catherine II and led by Joseph Billings who had accompanied Captain Cook on his third voyage. The party sailed from Okhotsk in 1787 with Billings piloting Pallas and Sarychev at the helm of The Glory of Russia . In addition to charting the Siberian coastline, Sarychev was charged with asserting Catherine's sovereignty in the region. This copy was once in the collection of Angus Ward, American Consul in Russia in the build-up to and during the Second World War; first in Moscow in 1938, and later as Consul General in Vladivostok. He was also Consul in Mukden, China, during the final years of the civil war and was held under house arrest by Mao’s forces for nearly a year – a diplomatic hiccup now known as “The Ward Incident” (1948-1949). Arctic Bib. 37223; Howes S-115; Lada-Mocarski 57; Obol'ianinov 2406; Sabin 77123; Whittaker, Russia Engages the World , 1453-1825, p.101. One volume, folio (447 x 284mm). 51 mostly double-page engravings, including the large folding map, by Ivan and Konstantin Cheskii, Khudiakov, I. Telegin and A. Ekimov; extra-illustrated with six plates from Sarychev’s work of 1811; 4 maps [including the main folding map] backed with linen and housed in a sleeve mounted to the inside back cover (scattered spotting; some plates with old marginal repairs). 20th-century maroon half roan, the spine and upper side lettered in gilt in Cyrillic (extremities lightly rubbed). Provenance: Angus Ivan Ward (1893-1969, U.S. Consul in Russia and China, later Ambassador to Afghanistan; bookplate) – William Reese Co.