IMAGES OF DUTCH TOWNS AND VILLAGES IN THE 18TH CENTURY
THE HISTORICAL-TOPOGRAPHICAL "ATLAS" OF ANDRIES SCHOEMAKER
on CD-ROM and microfiche
Background
Andries Schoemaker (1660-1735) was an Amsterdam merchant whose passion was collecting historical and visual information on the towns and villages, churches and castles and other topographical features of his native country. Especially in the period 1725-1735 he devoted himself to assembling material on the history of the various localities. Consulting different sources, which he usually cited in the margins of his manuscript, he wrote a historical description of each place that he illustrated with drawings, many in remarkably handsome color, that he either made himself or had made for him by contemporary artists, such as Cornelis Pronk (1691-1759) and his student Abraham de Haen (1707-1748) with whom he made summer voyages throughout the Dutch republic in order to set as much of the topography as possible down on paper. At times he also made use of published prints, many from sources now lost, which showed the topographical situation in previous periods. These he cut out and pasted into his own large-format notebooks or redrew himself in color. Now and then he also sketched his own maps and city plans or made use of exisiting ones. Other illustrations incorporated into his manuscripts by Schoemaker included family- and town coats-of-arms and other heraldic devices, coins, seals, medallions and costumes.
In this fashion he created a multivolume work consisting of some 9,000 pages with more than 2,600 pages of color illustrations.
It covers all the provinces of the country existing at the time and is arranged alphabetically by locality within each province.
After his death this "atlas", as such a work was known in the eighteenth century, passed to his son Gerrit, who had assisted his father in the endeavor. When he died shortly after his father, however, the collection was broken up, a few volumes were lost and the others scattered. Fortunately the surviving volumes eventually found their way into the collections of various Dutch museums, libraries and archives. The Royal Dutch Antiquarian Society (Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap = KOG), housed in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, for example, holds 10 volumes describing the provinces of North and South Holland and the city of Amsterdam.
Importance for research
The Schoemaker atlas provides fascinating source material for those working in:
— historical topography
— local, regional and national history of the Netherlands
— art history
— genealogy and heraldry
— numismatics
— Dutch folklore and local customs
— history of historiography
— architecture and town planning
Editions on microfiche and CD-ROM
Surviving only in manuscript and scattered as it is over various repositories this source has not been exploited as fully as it deserves by scholars. Now in cooperation with the KOG, the library of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and other Dutch institutions, MMF has brought the surviving volumes of the Schoemaker atlas together and made them available for research in a black/white edition on microfiche and an edition on 6 CD-ROMs with full-color reproduction of the illustrations and advanced searching possibilities. Both editions are complete.
Why microfiche?
The microfiche edition guarantees the long-term preservation of the material on the only recognized archival medium.
Why CD-ROM?
The CD-ROM edition captures the color and allows for greatly increased accessibility through its powerful retrieval software and indexing.
The interface of the CD-ROM is in both English and Dutch. The manuscript itself and the captions of the illustrations are in Dutch.
The CD-ROMs can be searched by
— province
— place
— artist
— keywords contained in the transcriptions of the captions of the color drawings
— keywords added by the publisher
— combinations of the above
Additional features of the CD-ROM
— bookmarks for saving search results
— two 18th-century maps and a modern map of the Netherlands for orientation
— history list
— historical introduction in English and Dutch with bibliography
— complete help file in English and Dutch
A special combined price for both editions has been set.
Participants in the project
Brabant-Collectie, Katholieke Universiteit Brabant
Flehite Museum Amersfoort
Groninger Archieven
Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap, Amsterdam
Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag
Provinsjale en Buma Biblioteek fan Fryslân
Rijksarchief in Drenthe
Rijksarchief in Overijssel
Bibliotheek Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
Het Utrechts Archief
Vereeniging tot beoefening van Overijsselsch Regt en Geschiedenis (VORG)
Acknowledgments
The production of the CD-ROM edition has been made possible in part by a generous grant from the Stichting VSB Fonds, Utrecht.