Category: Antique Maps

Recent Auctions: Joan Blaeu and Australia, Sam Greer and Vancouver

Joan Blaeu, Archipelagus Orientalis, sive Asiaticus, 1663. Map, 118.5 cm × 152 cm. National Library of Australia.

Joan Blaeu’s Archipelagus Orientalis is to Australia what Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map is to America: a case where a first appearance on a map is referred to as a country’s birth certificate. The 17th-century map included data from Tasman’s voyages and named New Holland (Australia) and New Zealand for the first time. The National Library of Australia is working on conserving its 1663 copy, but an earlier, unrestored version dating from around 1659 recently turned up in an Italian home; earlier this month it was auctioned at Sotheby’s and sold for nearly £250,000. [Tony Campbell]

Meanwhile, at a somewhat more modest scale, an 1884 hand-drawn map of what would later become the tony Vancouver neighbourhood of Kitsilano by colourful local Sam Greer went for C$24,200—five times its estimated price.

Exhibitions in the Northeast

A new exhibition at Harvard University’s Pusey Library, Manuscript Maps: Hand-Drawn Treasures of the Harvard Map Collection, “highlights the process of mapmaking by looking at maps drawn by hand.” Opened yesterday; runs until September 27.

Meanwhile, in Schenectady, New York, there’s another exhibition at Union College’s Kelly Adirondack Center: Parts But Little Known: Maps of the Adirondacks from 1556 runs until September 29.

Mapping Bristol

A wide-ranging article at Bristol 24/7 explores at the different ways that Bristol has been mapped throughout history. It begins with a look at Jeff Bishop’s 2016 book, Bristol Through Maps (Redcliffe), which includes 24 maps of the city from 1480 to today. Then it goes on to Bristol City Council’s Know Your Place, which layers historic maps on top of a web mapping interface, and finishes with a roundup of the work of local artists and graphic designers. Quite the microcosm: so many kinds of mapping activity, all focused on one British city. [Tony Campbell]

Mapping in the Enlightenment

Mapping in the Enlightenment: Science, Innovation, and the Public Sphere, an exhibition at the University of Michigan’s William L. Clements Library, “uses examples from the Clements Library collection to tell the story of creating, distributing, and using maps during the long 18th century. Enlightenment thinking stimulated the effort to make more accurate maps, encouraged the growth of map collecting and map use by men and women in all social classes, and expanded the role of maps in administration and decision-making throughout Europe and her overseas colonies.” Fridays from 10 to 4 through October. [History of Cartography Project]

Picturing Places and the Klencke Atlas

From the Klencke Atlas, c. 1660. British Library.

This week the British Library launched an online collection of digitized “topographical materials” (i.e., views of and writings about places) called Picturing Places. More than 500 items—paintings, prints, drawings, texts and yes, maps—so far, sorted by theme and with dozens of accompanying articles.

Picturing Places demonstrates that topography involves far more than straightforward ‘pictorial evidence’ of what a place looked like in the past. We showcase some of the Library’s most treasured topographical materials, including Tudor views collected by Robert Cotton and maps and views owned by George III. But much of this material remains uncharted, and is being brought to wider attention for the first time. The first phase of Picturing Places features over 500 collection items, most never published before, and over 100 articles providing fresh perspectives and new ideas.

One of these digitized items is one of the Library’s crown jewels: the gigantic Klencke Atlas presented to Charles II in 1660, all of the pages of which can now be viewed online. How do you digitize an atlas that is 1.76 by 2.31 metres wide when open? Not with a flatbed scanner, you don’t. Here’s how:

Previously: British Library Digitizing George III’s Map Collection.

Whither the Waters

Out this month from the University of New Mexico Press: John L. Kessell’s Whither the Waters: Mapping the Great Basin from Bernardo de Miera to John C. Frémont, a relatively short book that places 18th-century colonial New Mexican artist and cartographer Bernardo de Miera in his historical context and explores how later cartographers made use of his work. The Santa Fe New Mexican covers the launch of the book with a look at both author and subject. Amazon. [WMS]

Persuasive Cartography Collection Expands

“The Silver Dog With the Golden Tail,” 1896. Map, 20×26 cm. P. J. Mode Collection, Cornell University Library.

More than 500 maps have just been added to the P. J. Mode Collection of Persuasive Cartography at the Cornell University Library. That’s almost double the number they began with. Via email, P. J. Mode also says that “Cornell has implemented a much-improved image browser with a very robust search function. I hope there are some things that you’ll find new and interesting!”

Previously: Persuasive Cartography; Another Look at Persuasive Cartography.

Early French Maps of the Great Lakes

On Tuesday, Jean-François Palomino of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec gave a talk on early French mapmaking efforts in the Great Lakes region at the University of Michigan. I missed being able to tell you about it in advance, but student newspaper The Michigan Daily has a writeup. [WMS]

(Palomino is one of the co-authors of Mapping a Continent: Historical Atlas of North America, 1492-1814, the French edition of which is La Mesure d’un continent.)

Burmese Maps at Cambridge

Map of the Maingnyaung region, located between the Chindwin and Mu Rivers in Upper Burma, in the present-day Sagaing Region, ca. 1860. Textile map, 209 × 204 cm. Cambridge University Library Special Collections. Creative Commons licence.

Natasha Pairaudeau: “Imagine maps as big as bedsheets, and then imagine the sheets big enough for beds made wide enough to sleep extended families. Only such a double stretch of the imagination can provide the scale of the three Burmese maps in the University Library’s collection, which have recently been made available online in digital format.” [Cartophilia]

Maps of Delhi

Pilar Maria Guerrieri’s Maps of Delhi, a collection of 66 maps from the 19th century to the present day, comes out from Niyogi Books in August. Nevertheless, the wire service IANS has an article about it now: it reveals how the book came about because the author wished it had been available when she began working on her doctorate.

“While I was searching specifically for the pre and post independence maps in several Indian archives and institutions, I slowly found and collected all the other documents. At the end of my PhD I realised that if I had the complete collection of maps at the beginning of my studies, my research would have been much more easier and smoother. I decided to publish the whole collection with the aim that it will turn to be useful for scholars interested in understanding the capital of India,” Guerrieri told IANS in an interview.

[Tony Campbell/WMS]

Greater Arizona: A Map Exhibition at Arizona State

Greater Arizona: Mapping Place, History and Transformation, an exhibition of maps from the Simon Burrow Map Collection at Arizona State University’s School of Transborder Studies that “highlights the different ways the region of Arizona has been conceptualized in a global context,” runs until 19 May at ASU’s Hayden Library. ASU Now: “Dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries, the maps document everything from peoples to borders to geographical features, and were created by a number of nations, including France, Great Britain and Holland—all that variation reveals portions of history that in some cases have been ignored.” [Tony Campbell/WMS]

1882 Isochrone Map of France

Cameron Booth (of Transit Maps fame) posted an 1882 isochrone map of France showing travel times from Paris by rail to Twitter and boy did it ever go viral. He’s planning on selling a print of it on his online store.

Scanning the Miranda Map

Speaking of scanning old maps. The State Library of New South Wales, Australia is scanning its copy of Jozeph da Costa e Miranda’s 1706 world map with a state-of-the-art high resolution scanner.

This digitisation process combines high resolution scanning, up to 1200 dpi, with precise lighting technique and incredibly accurate colour rendition. This process is ideal for scanning really large, long items like this map,  panoramas and items with high levels of fine detail.  The files captured at these resolutions allow up to 50× enlargement, making them excellent sources for detailed investigation into aspects of the physical substrate of the item and for innovative multimedia exhibition and display.

The map was scanned in 15cm sections and will be stitched together to create an exceptionally accurate and detailed high resolution file.

This short video (above) gives a close-up view of the process. [WMS]