To celebrate the Lunar New Year - The Year of the Pig - Sue Berman spoke with rare book specialist Georgia Prince about the taonga featured in the Real Gold case.
Johann Nieuhof’s illustrations, published in his 1665 account of the expedition, were the first reliable pictures of China available in the West.
During the 17th century, as the Dutch began to explore the world, the Dutch East India Company sent a trading mission to China. The Dutch edition was quickly translated into other languages, including this Latin edition of 1668.
Johannes Nieuhof. Legatio Batavica ad Magnum Tartariae Chamum Sungteium. Leiden: Jacob Meurs, 1668.
https://discover.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1969899
The Atlas Chinensis is a compilation of different accounts of the various Dutch trading missions to China. It was produced by the English publisher and map-maker John Ogilby.
The Dutch arrived soon after the fall of the Ming dynasty and tried unsuccessfully to gain concessions from the new Manchu Qing Emperor.
The engraving depicts “Aimuy” (or Amoy as the English called it) on the coast opposite Taiwan. It is the port city of Xiamen in the Fujian Province.
Arnoldus Montanus. Atlas Chinensis. London: Thomas Johnson, 1671.
https://discover.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1969769
John Thomson was born in Edinburgh in 1837. From 1862 he spent ten years living and working as a photographer in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Taiwan and China.
Thomson’s journeys in Asia would have been arduous. He needed to carry cameras, lenses, glass plates, chemicals, trays and material to build portable darkrooms. Negotiating the different cultures and languages would have also been challenging.
The images on display come from four volumes of books on Thomson’s travels in China. These books are held in Sir George Grey Special Collections and can be viewed in the reading room.
John Thomson. Illustrations of China and its people: a series of two hundred photographs with letterpress descriptive of the places and people represented. London: Sampson Low, 1873-1874.
