Richard Blome

Little is known of Richard Blome's life and circumstances, although it is possible to piece together the main events of his life by studying his work, of which many examples still survive. Blome flourished between 1660 and 1705, during which time he produced several books and maps. From 1660 he concentrated particularly on maps of parts of Asia, especially on Arabia Felix, which is known today as Saudi Arabia. He also produced a collection entitled Britannia and supplied maps for Bernhard Varenius's works on cosmography and geography in the 1680s and 1690s. In 1678 he tackled a new area of subject matter in a book entitled ‘Gentleman's Recreation Encyclopaedia of Arts and Sciences,' which included chapters on horsemanship, hawking, hunting and cock fighting. In 1681, Blome produced an illustrated pocket atlas in an attempt to make maps both more widely available and also more portable.