gems, diamond, antique diamond, table cut, India, Golconda, history, history of diamond, maps

Album with 48 performances on 47 album sheets. The album contains the series entitled: Les Indes Orientales et Occidentales, et autres lieux. It is a title print, six maps (numbered b to g) and forty representations of plants, animals and peoples in the West and East Indies. The series is concluded with a vignette. Leather strap with a cover sheet at the back. Les Indes Orientales et Occidentales, et autres lieux is an extensively illustrated geographical and ethnographic work associated with Romeyn de Hooghe, presenting the peoples, customs, religions, ceremonies, commerce, natural productions, and notable sights of regions in the East and West Indies and elsewhere. Its plates depict peoples and dress, religious rites, festivals, sacrifices, markets, ships, armies, cities, landscapes, plants, animals, mining and commerce, together with commodities including spices, sugar, precious stones, and other valuable products. The work reflects the strong European interest in distant lands generated by seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century exploration and overseas trade. Of particular interest to gemologists are its visual and textual representations of diamond mining in India.