Herald of Timor, Antique Wahlen Costume Print, 1843-1844

A herald of Timor, 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 "Herault de Timor", which the volume gives as a herald of Timor, an office attached to the small princely courts of the island and concerned with the carrying of messages and the announcing of the ruler. Timor in the 1840s was divided between Dutch and Portuguese spheres and governed in practice through a patchwork of local rulers, so court offices of this sort were a real part of island life and were noted by the travelers whose accounts Wahlen and his compilers used. The sheet is a wood engraving on paper and is uncolored, 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 herald is one of the more distinctive Timor subjects in the series, and it hangs particularly well beside the Amfoang warrior and the Rotti and Sawoe plates as a group.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with small chips at one edge and faint marginal soiling; the image itself is clean and well printed.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.