The Exploration Treasury

Amazing Journeys Around the World in Rare Artworks and Prints, Maps and Personal Narratives.

From Britain’s renowned Royal Geographical Society comes a beautiful collector’s box—complete with 20 double-sided prints and an accompanying paperback—that captures 100 years of world exploration.

From its founding in 1830, the Royal Geographical Society became the institution to which travellers and explorers of many nationalities came for advice and recognition. Over the years it amassed a wealth of paintings, photographs, maps, and official accounts. Covering the first century of the Society’s existence and a period of intense scientific exploration into unfamiliar and unknown regions of the globe, this treasury celebrates a series of distinguished expeditions through the visual material created by official artists, photographers, expedition teams, and solitary travellers. Alongside famous explorers such as Livingstone, Scott and Shackleton, and Nansen and Amundsen, are travellers such as David Roberts in Egypt and Isabella Bird in China. Other chapters cover the work of archaeologists—including Aurel Stein’s excavations along the Silk Road and Alfred Maudslay’s documentation of Mayan ruins in Central America—and the desert exploits of colonial administrators, diplomats, and scientists. For each expedition there are one or two accompanying prints, including the watercolors of Thomas Baines, who joined Livingstone’s Zambezi Expedition before journeying to Victoria Falls with James Chapman, early photographs of Yosemite by Carleton Watkins, and the artwork and photographs of Harry Hamilton Johnston in Africa.