Caroline Islands

Antique Views of the Caroline Islands

This category features original antique views and prints portraying the Caroline Islands, a vast archipelago in the western Pacific. Early European explorers encountered these islands during long voyages across the Pacific, and the earliest printed visuals often derive from sketches made during those maritime expeditions, later reproduced as engravings or lithographs.

Artists and cartographers documented island coastlines, village approaches, anchorages and landforms that were new to European audiences. The Caroline Islands’ geographic complexity—numerous small islands spread across a wide area—presented particular challenges to early navigation and mapping, which is reflected in the character of period visuals.

Antique prints of the Carolinas are valued for their rarity, historic context and insight into early Pacific contact and exploration. As original works on paper, they provide collectors and historians with visual records of a region that was among the most remote in early Pacific cartography.