John Seller

John Seller was a mathematical instrument maker to Kings Charles I and James II, and, until his death in 1700, the producer of many maps and sea charts covering all parts of the world.

The items most likely to be seen are charts from his volumes of the English Pilot. Issued from 1671, they comprise both original work and reworked and altered plates of Dutch charts.

The English Pilot was published through to the end of the 17th century, when John Thornton, and, later, the firm of Mount and Page, reissued the work. The charts arc mostly embellished with large decorative cartouches.

Seller also produced some fine county maps, but for financial reasons was unable to complete the projected set of counties - the only ones issued were of Middlesex, Surrey, Oxfordshire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. They are scarce.

A small series of county maps was issued about 1695, each with the title within a small cartouche, and these were re-issued at the end of the 18^th century

Francis Grose published these small county maps in his Antiquities of England and Wales in the first few years of the 19^th for which the cartouches were erased and a simple title substituted.