The Osher Map Library has a new website, its first major redesign in a decade. (Details in the media release from HistoryIT, their tech supplier.)
Category: Antique Maps
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]
Connecticut Map Society
It’s worth giving new organizations as much of a boost as possible, so let me draw your attention to the brand-new Connecticut Map Society, whose inaugural meeting takes place this Sunday (9 April) at 3:00 PM in Durham. Details on the website. [WMS]
1882 Isochrone Map of France
I think I'm in love: a stunning isochrone map of travel times from Paris by rail in 1882 (making this a very early example of the genre). pic.twitter.com/gaSEzGCQWI
— Transit Maps (@transitmap) March 31, 2017
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]
Digital Map Restoration
To be honest, when I think of map restoration I think of the painstaking work of preserving and repairing damaged old maps; the Chimney Map is only one such example. What ABC News (Australia) describes in this profile of photographer Tony Sheffield is more like digital retouching: scanning in an original and correcting it in Photoshop. It gives us a corrected image, but the original object is untouched. It really comes down to what you’re aiming for. [WMS]
More Book Reviews
Last December Atlas Obscura reviewed Treasures of the Map Room (Bodleian, September 2016), a book that presents maps from Oxford’s Bodleian Library; I also reviewed it in December. [WMS]
Britain’s Tudor Maps (Batsford, October 2016), a collection of maps from John Speed’s 1611 Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, was reviewed recently in Geographical magazine.
Appraising the Eagle Map
On a recent episode of the PBS version of the Antiques Roadshow, Chris Lane appraised a copy of the 1833 Churchman Eagle Map of the United States at $25,000. On the Antiques Print Blog Lane explains how he arrived at that number, which some have thought was a bit on the high side. [WMS]
Restored Chimney Map Goes on Display
A 17th-century map by Gerald Valck found stuffed up a chimney has now, following painstaking restoration work (see previous entry), been put on display at the National Library of Scotland’s George VI Bridge building in Edinburgh until 17 April. News coverage: The Art Newspaper, The National. [John Overholt, Tony Campbell]
Map Exhibitions Around the World
Mapping the Philippine Seas, an exhibition of 165 maps and sea charts of the Philippine archipelago from the 16th to the 19th century from the private collections of the Philippine Map Collectors Society. At the Metropolitan Museum of Manila. Opened 15 March, runs until 29 April. BusinessWorld. [WMS]
The Osher Map Library’s next exhibition, To Conquer or Submit? America Views the Great War, opens this Thursday (Facebook, Eventbrite). It “commemorates and explores American participation in the Great War—the ‘War to End All Wars’—with a sample of informative and propagandistic posters, maps, and atlases” from the Osher collections, which are based at the University of Southern Maine in Portland.
The World According to Blaeu: Joan Blaeu’s 1648 map of the world, more than two by three metres in size, will be on display at the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam from 14 April to 31 December. [WMS]
Regions and Seasons
A new exhibition at the Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map Center: Regions and Seasons: Mapping Climate Through History. “In this exhibition, you will discover how ‘Venti’ were wind personas who directed ancient ships and ‘Horae’ were goddesses of the seasons who dictated natural order during the 15th-17th centuries, how Enlightenment scientists started to collect and map weather data, and how 19th century geographers reflecting the golden age of thematic cartography created innovative techniques to represent vast amounts of statistical data and developed complex maps furthering our understanding of climatic regions.” Runs through August 27; also online.
Rodney W. Shirley
According to a Facebook post by the Washington Map Society’s Bert Johnson, Rodney W. Shirley, the author of several books of cartographic antiquarian research, including The Mapping of the World, Courtiers and Cannibals, Angels and Amazons, and other titles on early printed maps, died last Saturday. I have not been able to find an obituary or other notice; I will update this post if I do.
John Blake’s Sea Chart Books
Two books by John Blake on nautical maps that had heretofore escaped my attention: The Sea Chart, the second edition of which came out last May; and Sea Charts of the British Isles, a 2008 book that is getting a paperback edition in April. [WMS]
Sweet Home: Alabama’s History in Maps
Sweet Home: Alabama’s History in Maps “is an exhibit presented by the Birmingham Public Library in celebration of Alabama’s bicentennial. The Library’s Southern History Department has carefully selected over 50 maps from our world class collection to tell the story of Alabama. The maps in this exhibit represent 450 years of exploration, expansion, and development.” It opens Wednesday and runs through the end of April; there’s also an online version. Alabama Newscenter. [Tony Campbell]
Where Disaster Strikes
Where Disaster Strikes: Modern Space and the Visualization of Destruction, an exhibition of disaster maps, is taking place now until 19 April at Harvard’s Pusey Library.
Floods, fires, earthquakes, volcanoes, bombings, droughts, and even alien invasions: disaster can take many forms. And, although disasters are always felt dramatically, a disaster’s form and location impacts who records its effects and what forms those records take. “Where Disaster Strikes” investigates the intertwined categories of modern space and disaster through the Harvard Map Collection’s maps of large destructive events from the London Fire to the present.
Open to the public. The exhibition also has a substantial online presence.