Les six voyages. En Turquie, en Perse, et aux Indes

French-language Dutch edition of the Six Voyages, published in Utrecht in 1712 by Guillaume Vande Water and Guillaume & Jacob Poolsum, one of only three French editions of the work printed outside France between the original Paris edition of 1676 and 1724, the others being Amsterdam 1678 and The Hague 1718. Illustrated with a portrait of Tavernier, an allegorical frontispiece signed J. Goeree, and 34 plates, 27 of them folding, depicting among other subjects coins, objects, plans, customs, and precious stones encountered during his travels.

Contemporary full brown calf, preserved in a modern slipcase covered with old marbled paper. Spine with raised bands richly gilt, red morocco lettering- and numbering-pieces. Volume I with a small loss to the lower joint at head, losses at foot, minute losses between the bands, some nibbling to the lower board, and surface wear to the spine and partly to the boards; volume II with some surface wear. Three gatherings slightly misaligned in volume I and one in volume II. Title-page to the Second Part with a cut-out and marginal loss; dampstaining to the outer margins of the first four leaves. Tear with small loss to the plate depicting the finest diamonds sold to the King, Second Part, fol. 374. Nevertheless a generally fresh set.

A dealer in precious stones and luxury goods before becoming an author, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier made six major journeys to the East between the 1630s and 1668. His travels took him through the Ottoman Empire and Persia to India, including the diamond-producing regions of the kingdom of Golconda, where he observed at first hand the extraction, trade, and circulation of gemstones.

Returning to Paris at the end of 1668, Tavernier brought Louis XIV a considerable group of precious stones. On 8 March 1669 the royal treasury paid him 898,731 livres for the acquisition, which comprised approximately a thousand gems and diamonds. Among them was the celebrated blue diamond weighing 112 3/16 carats, which Louis XIV had recut to form the great Blue Diamond of the French Crown, now known as the French Blue; stolen with the Crown Jewels in 1792 and subsequently recut again, it is the stone from which the Hope Diamond, now at the Smithsonian Institution, derives. Tavernier was ennobled in the same year.

The plates in the Six Voyages give striking visual form to this commercial activity. Some reproduce the principal diamonds that passed through Tavernier’s hands and were acquired by the King; the printed image thus becomes a direct extension of the transaction itself. Far from serving merely as decoration, these figures belong to the documentary apparatus of the work, in which coins, weights, merchandise, routes, and local practices are recorded with the practical attention of a merchant accustomed to measuring and comparing value.

Tavernier composed his account from notes accumulated over almost forty years of travel. The literary shaping of the Six Voyages was traditionally attributed, at least in part, to Samuel Chappuzeau; La Chapelle is thought to have collaborated instead on the supplementary Recueil de plusieurs relations. The work rapidly achieved wide European success, of which the French editions printed in Amsterdam, Utrecht, and The Hague remain eloquent evidence decades after its first appearance.

Through the stones he describes, the trade routes he traces, and the diamonds he brought into the collections of Louis XIV, Tavernier brings together in a single work the experience of the traveller, the eye of the merchant, and the memory of royal commerce. The plates give this convergence particular force: they preserve on paper gems that the author had himself traded, transported, and, in some cases, personally delivered to the Sun King.