Just added a nice series of maps derived from Seutter’s Atlas Minor, praecipua Orbis Terrarum Imperia regna et provincias (1740, Augsburg). In addition to a highly attractive world map with original coloring, there is also a North America map with a strong California as an island as well as period (incorrect) interpretations of Japan, Australia and Africa.

Click here to browse all of our Seutter maps!

Georg Matthaus Seutter (1647 – 1756) was one of the most important and prolific German map publishers of the 18th century. Seutter started his career as an apprentice brewer. Apparently uninspired by the beer business, Seutter left his apprenticeship and moved to Nuremberg where he apprenticed as an engraver under the tutelage of the prominent J. B. Homann. Sometime in the early 1700s Seutter left Homann to establish his own independent cartographic publishing firm in Augsburg. Though he struggled in the early years of his independence, Seutter’s engraving skill and commitment to diversified map production eventually gained him a substantial following. Most of Seutter’s maps were heavily based upon, if not copies of, earlier work done by the Homann and Delisle firms. By 1732 Seutter was one of the most prolific publishers of his time and was honored by the German Emperor Karl VI with the title of “Imperial Geographer”. Suetter continued to publish until his death, at the height of his career, in 1757. The Seutter firm sadly fell into the hands of Seutter’s wastrel son Albrecht Carl Seutter who did little to advance the firm until in own death in 1762. Following Albrecht’s death, the firm was divided between the established Probst firm and the emerging firm of Tobias Conrad Lotter. Lotter, Matthaus Seutter’s son in law, was a master engraver and worked tirelessly on behalf of the Seutter firm. It is Lotter, who would eventually become one of the most prominent cartographers of his day, and his descendents, who are generally regarded as the true successors to Matthaus Seutter. (Ritter, M. Seutter, Probst and Lotter: An Eighteenth-Century Map Publishing House in Germany., “Imago Mundi”, Vol. 53, (2001), pp. 130-135. (via Geographicus)