Rajah of Dao, Antique Wahlen Costume Print, 1843-1844

A rajah of Dao, an original antique wood engraving from Auguste Wahlen's Moeurs, usages et costumes de tous les peuples du monde, published in Brussels between 1843 and 1844. The plate is lettered "Rajah de Dao", the rajah or ruler of Dao, believed to be the small island west of Rote now usually written Ndao, in the waters south west of Timor. Ndao was a tiny domain with its own ruler, and its people were known in the region as travelling goldsmiths and weavers who worked across Rote and Timor. A named ruler of so small a place is an unusual subject for a general European costume book, and it shows how closely the compilers followed the Dutch accounts of the eastern archipelago. The sheet is a wood engraving on paper and is uncoloured, as issued in this part of the series, and the crispness of the block work is what carries the image.

Moeurs, usages et costumes de tous les peuples du monde was published in Brussels by Auguste Wahlen at the Librairie Historique-Artistique between 1843 and 1844. The four volumes set out to describe the dress, customs, occupations and social divisions of the peoples of Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania, drawing on travel narratives, earlier costume books and other sources then treated as authoritative, and they carried approximately one hundred and ninety to two hundred plates, the count varying between copies and editions.

Wahlen was the publisher and compiler rather than the artist, and where a name such as Duverger, Pannemaker, Mercier, Lisbet, Markaert or Vermorcken appears on a sheet it belongs to the illustrator or the engraver, and no artist is attributed here without one.

The plates are wood engravings on paper. The images should be read as a nineteenth century European interpretation of the cultures they show rather than as a documentary record, which is a large part of what makes the series interesting to historians of the period. The rajah is one of the rarer subjects in the work and makes a good centre for a group of the Timor, Rotti and Sawoe plates hung together.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with a frayed right edge, a small marginal spot and faint pencil marks; the portrait itself is clean.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.