Author: Jonathan Crowe

Jonathan Crowe blogs about maps at The Map Room. His essays and reviews have been published by AE, Calafia, The New York Review of Science Fiction, the Ottawa Citizen, Strange Horizons and Tor.com. He lives in Shawville, Quebec.

Mapping Scottish and/or Nonexistent Islands

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

scotland-mapping-islandsThe Scotsman’s review of Scotland: Mapping the Islands  focuses on the Scottish islands that didn’t exist, particularly in a 1560 map by Italian mapmaker Giorgio Sideri (aka Callapoda). On the other hand: “In contrast to Callapoda’s chart, many genuine Scottish islands were omitted from maps of Scotland altogether until only 150 years ago.” [Tony Campbell]

undiscovered-islandsSpeaking of islands that didn’t exist, and maps thereof, there’s a new book about them. The Un-Discovered Islands by Malachy Tallack (Birlinn, October). “Gathered in the book are two dozen islands once believed to be real but no longer on the map. These are the products of imagination, deception and simple human error. They are phantoms and fakes: an archipelago of ex-isles and forgotten lands.” Available in the U.K. for now (or via third-party sellers); the Shetland News story about the book suggests that a U.S. edition is forthcoming. Official website. [WMS]

Previously: New Map Books for October 2016.

River Basins in Rainbow Colours

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river-basin-rainbow

The latest map to go viral is Robert Szucs’s dramatic and colourful map of the U.S. river basins. It’s even more spectacular in high resolution. Made with QGIS, the map separates river basin by colour and assigns stream thickness by Strahler number. I do have a couple of quibbles. The map doesn’t distinguish between the Hudson Bay and Atlantic watersheds: the Great Lakes and Red River basins are coloured the same way. And speaking of the Great Lakes, I have no idea why they look like ferns here. The map is available for sale on Etsy, along with similar maps of other countries, continents and regions. Daily Mail coverage.

Exhibition Writeups

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

A couple of reviews of recent map exhibitions that I’ve mentioned before. First, the Arctic Journal looks at the Osher Map Library’s current exhibition, The Northwest Passage: Navigating Old Beliefs and New Realities (see previous entry). And the St. Louis Library’s fantasy maps exhibit (see previous entry), which wrapped up earlier this month, got a writeup from Book Riot. [Book Riot/Osher Maps]

Road Trees

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Road Trees project has produced animated isochrone maps showing road networks erupting fractally from a single departure point.

An isochrone in a map shows with the same color all points from which it takes the same time to arrive to a specific location.

We chose 10 locations around the world and for each of them constructed the isochrones on top of the road network of the corresponding country. Consequently, we plot these isochrones using a dynamic color palette representing the diffusion from the location of interest to any other point of the road network.

Unexpectedly, we found that the isochrones follow beautiful fractal patterns, very similar to networks shaped in the Nature by rivers, veins, or lightnings.

[Stephen Smith]

Fewer Maps, But Better Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Alan Smith of the Financial Times adds to the conversation about when to use a map to present your data, when not to—he gives an example where a gridded infographic is a much better choice than a map—and when more than one map is required to tell the whole story. “So as lovers of maps, we are keen to create beautiful ones whenever they offer a crucial addition. Truly appreciating them, however, means not defaulting to a map just because you can. Like a lot of things in the world of data visualisation, the right way to use them is to follow the mantra ‘fewer, but better’.” [WMS]

Previously: The End of Maps in Seven Charts; Don’t Make a Map.

The Map That Came to Life

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

the-map-that-came-to-life

As part of National Map Reading Week, the British Library’s map blog points to at least one example of how map reading used to be taught.

One of the most celebrated 20th century children’s map reading guides is showcased in our forthcoming exhibition Maps and the 20th Century: Drawing the Line. Published in 1948, Ronald Lampitt and James Deverson’s The Map that Came to Life follows the story of John and Joanna who use an Ordnance Survey map to walk to town. As they pass over fields, past houses and along footpaths, their surroundings are compared with map adjacent on the same page. The fields turn into contoured blank spaces, houses become black cubes, footpaths dashed lines. Map literacy is acquired by the reader as they accompany the children on their virtual journey, matching map with reality.

In The Map that Came to Life the map is portrayed as an objective, precise and above all truthful mirror of nature. And this inherent trustworthiness enabled maps to become important features of the lives of successive generations of people.

The idea that maps are objective and truthful is not something that would fly today, I think, but in the context of entry-level map education, which in Britain always seems to be specifically in terms of how to read an Ordnance Survey map, rather than maps in general, it seems harmless enough.

A complete scan of the book is available on this website. Back in 2008, Philip Wilkinson talked about the book on the English Buildings blog.

A Historical Atlas of Tibet

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

historical-atlas-tibetKarl E. Ryavec’s Historical Atlas of Tibet (University of Chicago Press, May 2015) was reviewed in India Today by an unusual personage: Nirupama Rao, who among other things has served as India’s ambassador to China and the U.S. Rao calls it “a much-needed and welcome work of scholarship that should benefit and enlighten committed scholars and Tibet aficionados alike. This is a 200-page atlas that is a revelation in itself.” [Tony Campbell]

Gregor Turk’s Conflux

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Gregor Turk, Choke: Hormuz- Land (left) & Water (right). | wood and rubber | 20" x 20" x 3"
Gregor Turk, Choke: Hormuz — Land (left) and Water (right). Wood and rubber, 20″×20″× 3″.

Gregor Turk’s Conflux is on display at Spalding Nix Fine Art in Atlanta, Georgia until October 28. Conflux “features wall-mounted box-like maps of global choke points, strategic locations where passage by land or sea is constricted.  Coastlines are depicted as alternating positive and negative cut-outs, framed in a grid and wrapped with repurposed rubber (bicycle inner tubes). Shadows and negative space come into play with the stark structures.” Turk’s past art includes ceramics and public art installations inspired by topographic and city maps; see also his 49th Parallel Project. [The Map as Art]

Pluto Globe Announced

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

pluto-globeAstronomy magazine has announced a new globe of Pluto based on data from the 2015 flyby of the dwarf planet by the New Horizons probe. The 12-inch globe is limited by what New Horizons was able to see: it’s low-resolution in some areas and blank in others. In addition, 65 surface features are labelled—a brave move considering that all the names are provisional until the IAU approves them. The globe sells for $100.

Atlas of Improbable Places

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

atlas-improbable-placesTravis Elborough’s Atlas of Improbable Places: A Journey to the World’s Most Unusual Corners came out last month from Aurum Press. The maps are by Alan Horsfield. “With beautiful maps and stunning photography illustrating each destination, Atlas of Improbable Places is a fascinating voyage to the world’s most incredible destinations. As the Island of Dolls and the hauntingly titled Door to Hell—an inextinguishable fire pit—attest, mystery is never far away.”

This appears to be another entry in the curated-collection-of-unusual-places genre, typified by such books as Atlas Obscura (my review), the Atlas of Remote Islands, the Atlas of Cursed Places (my review) or Unruly Places/Off the Map (my review).

Related: Map Books of 2016.

Free Workshop on How to Value Antique Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Fry-Jefferson Map Society is hosting a free workshop on how to value antique maps. It takes place at the Library of Virginia in Richmond on Saturday, 5 November 2016 and is led by Eliane Dotson, co-owner of Old World Auctions. I’d attend this if I could; I used to get a lot of questions from readers asking how much their maps were worth, enough that I had to add it to the FAQ, so I’d love to know a little about it. [WMS]

Matthew Picton Exhibition in Portland, Oregon

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Matthew Picton, Berlin Alexanderplatz (left); Moscow, The Master and Margarita (right).
Matthew Picton, Berlin Alexanderplatz (left); Moscow, The Master and Margarita (right).

An exhibition of Matthew Picton’s art is taking place at the Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland, Oregon. The Fall runs until 29 October.

Matthew Picton’s wall-mounted sculptures constructed from paper and vellum provide aerial views of urban environments. Unlike street maps, Picton’s representations are at once cartographic, topographical and cultural, incorporating period-specific texts and popular culture ephemera. In The Fall, Picton aims to illuminate periods of struggle and transition in societies and cultures that underwent seismic upheavals through the lens of literary and cinematic imagery. These works place elements of film posters and stills within the cartographic landscape of the city in which they are set, exploring the inversions of power and authority and the moral upending of society and civilization.

[The Map as Art]

Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas

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nonstop-metropolisAnother book coming out this month: Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas by Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Shapiro (University of California Press, 19 October). It’s the third and apparently final book in a series of city atlases authored or co-authored by Solnit — you may remember Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas (2010) or Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas (2013). If you do, you’ll have some idea of what Nonstop Metropolis is likely to be about. Curbed New York’s Nathan Kensinger has a piece on it, in case you don’t. [MAPS-L]

Hazard Maps of Yukon Communities

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Old Crow Landscape Hazard Risk Map (detail).
Old Crow Landscape Hazard Risk Map (detail).

Several Yukon communities are built on permafrost. In the context of climate change, that’s something of a problem. CBC News reports on a six-year research project that has produced hazard maps of seven Yukon communities; the maps evaluate the risk to future development from permafrost melting, flooding and ground instability. [CCA]