Joseph Moxon ( 1627 - 1691)

Moxon was a globemaker, mapmaker, instrument-maker, printer, publisher, letter-founder, engraver, author and translator. Hydrographer to the King.

Born at Wakefield, Yorkshire the son of James Moxon, a puritan printer who worked at Delft and Rotterdam in Holland. Moxon is said to have attended Wakefield Grammar School. He worked in partnership with his brother James as a printer 1646-1649, both brothers having become free of the Weavers’ Company by patrimony in 1646. He thereafter spent some years training as a globe and mapmaker, perhaps in Holland, perhaps with Blaeu. He was in partnership with John Sugar and advertising globes in London in 1653 and later successfully petitioned, with the support of Isaac Newtown and others, to be appointed Hydrographer to the King “for the making of globes, maps and sea-platts.” the warrant signed 10 Jan. 1662. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society 1678.

He produced, ‘A book of drawing, lmming, washing or colouring of mapps and prints’ 1647.