Cartographer, geographer, historian, writer, polyhistor, publisher, and collector Johann Weichard Valvasor (1641–1693) published a monumental cultural-historical topographical encyclopedia of Carniola in Nuremberg in 1689 with the title Die Ehre Dess Hertzogthums Crain. With the help of his colleagues, he collected numerous historical, ethnographic, naturalistic, and other information, which are still an invaluable source for the history of present-day Slovenian territory, while the huge costs of this long-standing project pushed him to the brink of survival. In his copperplate-printing workshop at the Bogenšperk castle and in collaboration with various illustrators and printers, including Johann Baptist Mayr from Ljubljana, he also published several topographies, collections of vedutas and maps of Carniola, Carinthia, Karst, and Istria, as well as some other books, such as a verified moral-didactic work Theatrum Mortis Humanae tripartitum. He was elected a member of the Royal Society of London in 1687 because of his resounding study on the functioning of the intermittent Cerknica Lake.