Unrecorded issue of the 1680 edition of the popular Amsterdam almanac, compiled by Dirck Rembrantsz. van Nierop (1610-1682) and published by Gilles Joosten Zaagman, often spelled Saeghman, a famous publisher of almanacs, popular books and prints, active at Amsterdam between 1642 and 1702. Although the present almanac was very popular and published for many years, the present issue has not been recorded anywhere. We have only been able to find one copy of an almanac published by Zaagmans for the same year and with the same title, but with a different woodcut vignette on the title page.
The various sections of the text fit often in a separate quire, so the buyer could choose which sections they wanted to include. The present copy includes four sections. The first is the calendar, with feast days, the times of sunset, sun dawn, and the tides, eclipses, the length of the days, and 12 interleaved blanks for annotations. The second is the Tijt-wijser, which mentions the times of departure and arrival of ferries, the closing of the Amsterdam city gates, and the dates of various markets. The third part is a short chronicle of the most important historical events since the birth of Christ until 1680. And the final part offers prognostications for each month of the upcoming year. The work also includes six thick leaves which one could write on with a silver stylus. The text written with this stylus could easily be removed, so that the paper could be reused.
Van Nierop was a Dutch shoemaker by trade who also occupied himself with cartography, mathematics and astronomy and who, sometimes together with his brother Pieter, made the astronomical calculations for numerous almanacs. He worked with Zaagmans from 1656 until his death in 1682. From the 1660s onwards, Zaagmans entrusted the compilation of his almanacs only to Van Nierop. Many other almanacs published in Amsterdam were also based on Van Nierop's calculations during this time, including Bouman's Comptoir almanach, and the famous Stichers almanacs.
The boards are slightly warped. Lacking the front free flyleaf, the leaves are slightly frayed around the edges, occasional soiling and thumbing, later annotations and pen trials on the cardboard leaves, one of the interleaved blanks is detached, but still present. Otherwise in good condition. Cf. Salman, Populair drukwerk in de Gouden eeuw (1999), esp. pp. 275-280, 391 and 414; STCN 381175588 (1 copy, other issue) WorldCat 68078514 (1 copy, other issue); not in Vandenhole; Welsh.