Old Map of British Isles in 1595 by Abraham Ortelius - England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Britannia, Hibernia

Few atlases changed the shape of commercial map publishing as decisively as Abraham Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, first issued in Antwerp in 1570 and generally credited as the first modern bound atlas, in which every plate was engraved to a uniform size with a text page on the reverse. This map of the British Isles, titled Angliae, Scotiae et Hiberniae, Sive Britannicar Insularum Descriptio, appeared in the Theatrum from its early editions and continued to be printed through the 1595 edition, by which date the atlas had grown to 147 maps and had already passed through numerous editions in Latin, French, German, Dutch, Spanish and Italian.

England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland are shown together as a single landmass, labelled in places with their Latin names Britannia and Hibernia, and the map's outline derives from earlier surveying work associated with Gerard Mercator rather than fresh fieldwork of Ortelius's own. A strapwork title cartouche fills the upper right corner, a separate Latin text cartouche and scale sit lower on the plate, and sailing ships are scattered across the surrounding sea in the decorative manner typical of Ortelius's engraved plates.

As one of the earliest printed images of the British Isles as a whole, the map predates the political union of England and Scotland by more than a century, and makes a striking gift for a map collector or anyone celebrating a move across the Irish Sea or the Scottish border. It is available here unframed in a full range of sizes.