Von Siebold's drawings of Korean people

Siebold was a German doctor who graduated in Germany and went to Holland and applied for a job at the Dutch ministry of Colonies who had taken over the former properties of the V.O.C.

Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold, born in the Bavarian town of Wurzburg came from a family of doctors. In 1815 he also started to study medicine at the university of Würzburg. He was an adventurous young man and went to the Netherlands and applied for a job at the ministry of Colonies in Holland in 1822.

He was hired and send to Batavia. Here he drew the attention of the Governor. Von Siebold seemed the right person for Japan. In 1823 he arrived at Deshima with the assignment to collect information about Japan. Nobody was allowed to leave the small island, but after treating some local officials, he was allowed to open a clinic outside the island, legally he was not allowed to be paid for his services, everybody gave him presents instead. This became the basis for an extensive collection which is still housed in Leiden, Holland. Almost a national museum in itself.

 



Map of Korea
Anville type.

Drawings of coins

Map of Korea
according to a local map

Hankul, the famous Korean alphabet

Drawing of clothes

Drawings of house articles

Drawings of old weapons

Also a drawing of old weapons

Map of Maarten Gerrits Vries made on his discovery trip in 1643 with his ship the Castricum. The two details are (top) also from Vries (bottom) a map showing the track of s voyage made by Captain James Colnett with his ship the Argonaute (1791).

A detail of a copy of the map of Hendrick Florent van Langren (1596) found in the book of Jan Huygens van Linschoten.

This is a detail of the inset in the map of Vries (top)

This is a detail of the inset in the map of Vries (bottom, Colnett)

Original cover page of the book

Coverpage of the reprint of the book (1973)

Tools of a carpenter and a joiner

Also an Anville type map with the orientation to the west.

Stricktly spoken not something from Von Siebold, but he certainly got some of the information about Korea and Japan from the daily registers in Japan, from which you see here the coverpage of the pages starting at October 28, 1660 till October 18, 1666.

A coaster

Drawing of a fisherman family

Hosatsjem, obviously someone he knew.

A Merchant

Mercants and Fishermen

Kumtsjun

A merchant

A sailor

A skipper

Back to Korea through 100 year old pictures main sheet