The Blaeu workshop in Amsterdam
Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571–1638) studied with the astronomer Tycho Brahe on the island of Hven in the 1590s, then set up in Amsterdam as a maker of globes, instruments and maps. He published his first world map in 1605 and went on to issue sea charts and atlases.
In 1633 he was appointed hydrographer to the Dutch East India Company, the VOC. The post gave him access to the charts and journals its captains brought back, and the maps in his atlases could be corrected as new information arrived. His son Joan took over the position when Willem died in 1638.
The Atlas Maior
Joan Blaeu (1596–1673) expanded the firm's atlas into the Atlas Maior, issued in Amsterdam from 1662. The Latin edition ran to eleven volumes and nearly six hundred maps, with thousands of pages of text, and it was also published in French, Dutch and Spanish. It was a luxury product, often sold hand-coloured.
Colour and craft
Many copies were coloured by specialists, with gold added to the borders and cartouches. Buyers could order maps uncoloured at a lower price, and many did.
The fire
In February 1672 a fire destroyed the Blaeu printing house on the Gravenstraat in Amsterdam, along with much of its stock and many copperplates. Joan Blaeu died the following year, and what remained of the stock and plates was sold off in 1674. The firm did not recover.
Other Amsterdam houses, among them those of Jan Jansson and, later, Frederick de Wit, kept the trade going, but none attempted an atlas on the scale of the Blaeu volumes.