The big news in the map world this week is a 17th-century map that was found in Aberdeen, Scotland, stuffed up a chimney to stop drafts. Discovered during renovations, the map was handed over to the National Library of Scotland, which found it to be in very bad shape: the 2.2×1.6-metre map, identified as work by the Dutch engraver Gerald Valck, was disintegrating, with pieces falling off every time it was moved. The Library’s restoration process is featured in an article in the winter 2016 issue of their magazine, Discover (direct PDF link), and in two videos about the map: one I’ve posted above, plus another, shorter video. You should take a look at them all: they present a fascinating look inside the conservation process. More coverage at Atlas Obscura, BBC News and Smithsonian.com.
Category: Antique Maps
The Phantom Atlas
Edward Brooke-Hitching’s new book, The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps (Simon & Schuster UK, November) is a book about fictitious and erroneous places that were presented on maps as real—“non-existent islands, invented mountain ranges, mythical civilisations and other fictitious geography.” Places like the Mountains of Kong, or the open ocean at the North Pole, or California as an island. Both the Economist’s 1843 Magazine and the Guardian have excerpts and examples from the book.
The hardcover seems to be available only in the U.K. right now, or through third-party resellers on Amazon. The ebook, however, is more widely available: here are links for the Kindle and iBooks. [Ian McDonald/WMS]
Related: Map Books of 2016.
Acadian Archives Exhibits Private Collection of Historic Maps
The Acadian Archives at the University of Maine at Fort Kent is hosting an exhibit of historic maps from the private collection of Jacques LaPointe.
The thirty-nine maps on display range widely in geography and in time. The earliest maps circa 1522-1532 are depictions of “Discovering America” according to seven cartographers of different European countries. The most recent maps reveal the United States’ claim to the “highlands” of Témiscouata and Britain’s claim to the “highlands” of Mars Hill, Maine before a compromise led to the Treaty of Webster-Ashburton of August 9, 1842 and the adoption of the St. John River as the international boundary between New Brunswick and Maine.
Bangor Daily News coverage. (Fort Kent is in northern Maine on the Canadian border, near Edmundston, New Brunswick.) [WMS]
A Roundup of Canadian Map News
Various items about maps and map history from here in Canada:
Last month former Canadian diplomat Dan Livermore donated his small collection of 17th- and 18th-century maps to the Brock University Library’s Special Collections and Archives, which will digitize the maps. St. Catharines Standard. [Tony Campbell/WMS]
Also last month, the Parry Sound North Star’s John Macfie came into possession of an 1886 map of the area by a local land agent, the history and provenance of which he explores in some detail. [WMS]
As the site of a major aviation base during World War II, the town of Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador, is surrounded by crash sites and other historical points of interest; the town and local historical groups are now mapping those sites and creating trails to them. [WMS]
Michael Layland, author of a book about the early maps and charts of Vancouver Island, writes in the Victoria Times-Colonist about his map habit and his research methods for that book. [WMS]
Sotheby’s to Auction Private Collection of North African Maps
On 15 November Sotheby’s will be auctioning Gerhard Lerchbaumer’s collection of maps of North Africa. Comprising more than a hundred maps dating from the 15th through the 19th centuries (Sotheby’s provides a list), the collection is expected to fetch between £60,000 and £80,000. [Tony Campbell]
Ricci Map Derivative Found in a Garage Sells for $24,000
Two dark, torn illustrations found in the garage of a Palm Springs home and listed for sale as “two 19th century hand colored prints of the world” turned out to be something quite possibly a bit more significant. First identified as two panels (of six) from a 1708 Korean map, Kim Jin-yeo’s Gonyeomangukjeondo (곤여만국전도), which is a derivative of Matteo Ricci’s famous Kunyu Wanguo Quantu (aka the “Impossible Black Tulip”), the panels ended up selling earlier this month for $24,000; the buyer, map dealer Barry Ruderman, is restoring the map for sale and suspects that it may in fact be a 17th-century Chinese copy rather than a Korean map. Daily Mail, Fine Books Magazine. [WMS]
Previously: China at the Center.
5,000-Year-Old Stone Map Found on Danish Island
An archaeological dig on the Danish island of Bornholm has turned up a small stone, in two pieces, with scratches in a criss-cross pattern that has led researchers to conclude it’s a 5,000-year-old map of the island.
Mapping Scottish and/or Nonexistent Islands
The 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]
Speaking 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.
Exhibition Writeups
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]
Free Workshop on How to Value Antique Maps
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]
Maggiolo Planisphere of 1531 to be Auctioned
A 16th-century portolan chart is being auctioned later this month at TEFAF New York. “The map, which was created by a Genoese cartographer named Vesconte Maggiolo in 1531, is one of the first depictions of America’s eastern seaboard. It’s also the first (extant) map, ever, to show New York harbor,” Bloomberg’s James Tarmy writes. The asking price is $10 million—which would tie it with the Library of Congress’s copy of the Waldseemüller map as the most expensive map ever. The seller, Daniel Crouch Rare Books, has produced a detailed, lavishly illustrated 56-page booklet befitting a map with an eight-figure asking price. [WMS]
New Map Books for October 2016
October is a busy month: I’m aware of six new map books coming out. Two deal with the mapping of war, three with the rich cartographical history of Great Britain, while the sixth is a colouring book.
Maps of War: Mapping Conflict Through the Centuries by Jeremy Black (Conway, 11 October). “There is little documented mapping of conflict prior to the Renaissance period, but, from the 17th century onward, military commanders and strategists began to document the wars in which they were involved and, later, to use mapping to actually plan the progress of a conflict. Using contemporary maps, this sumptuous new volume covers the history of the mapping of land wars, and shows the way in which maps provide a guide to the history of war.”
War Map: Pictorial Conflict Maps, 1900-1950 by Philip Curtis and Jakob Sondergard Pedersen (The Map House, 6 October). This is a companion book to the Map House’s exhibition of pictorial conflict maps, which I told you about last week.
Scotland: Mapping the Islands by Christopher Fleet, Charles W.J. Withers and Margaret Wilkes (Birlinn, 20 October). A follow-up to Scotland: Mapping the Nation (Birlinn, 2012), this book explores the Scottish islands through maps from the National Library of Scotland’s collection.
Art and Optics in the Hereford Map: An English Mappa Mundi, c. 1300 by Marcia Kupfer (Yale University Press, 25 October). Reinterpretation of the Hereford Mappa Mundi from an art history perspective. “Features of the colored and gilded map that baffle modern expectations are typically dismissed as the product of careless execution. Kupfer argues that they should rightly be seen as part of the map’s encoded commentary on the nature of vision itself.”
I told you about the Ordnance Survey’s Great British Colouring Map (Laurence King, 10 October) last July; it’s available this week. “Based on the accurate maps of Ordnance Survey, the colouring pages explore the coasts, towns, forests and countryside of England, Scotland and Wales. Includes detailed maps of cities and other places of interest such as Britain’s most recognizable tourist and historical locations, plus a stunning gatefold of London.”
Britain’s Tudor Maps: County by County (Batsford, 13 October) reproduces the maps from John Speed’s 1611 Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine. These apparently include the first individual county maps of Great Britain, so this is a work of some historical significance.
New Website About the 1507 Waldseemüller Map
A Land Beyond the Stars is a major new website dedicated to Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map. Announced last week, it’s a collaboration between the Library of Congress and the Galileo Museum in Florence, Italy; the latter institution is responsible for the multimedia presentation.
[The website] brings the map’s wealth of historical, technical, scientific and geographic data to a broader public. Interactive videos explain the sciences of cartography and astronomy and the state of navigational and geographic knowledge during the time of Waldseemüller. Developed with materials from the Library of Congress and other libraries around the world, the name of the website stems from Waldseemüller’s use of a passage from Roman poet Virgil, which can be found in the upper left corner of the 1507 map.
Later This Month, in Chicago
The International Map Collectors’ Society is holding its 34th International Symposium at the Newberry in Chicago later this month, from Monday the 24th of October to Saturday the 29th. Its theme is “Private Map Collecting and Public Map Collections in the United States”; the preliminary program is available online. Registration is currently $270.
The Symposium coincides with the fourth annual Chicago International Map Fair, which runs from the 28th to the 30th at the Chicago Cultural Center. Free admission with a suggested donation of $5-10. [WMS]
The Northwest Passage: An Osher Map Library Exhibition
The Osher Map Library’s new exhibition, The Northwest Passage: Navigating Old Beliefs and New Realities, opened last week (see previous entry). The opening was also broadcast live on YouTube; if you missed it, the archived video can be watched there. And if you can’t get to Portland Maine, The exhibition’s companion website is now live, and features more than 50 images and maps on the theme of Arctic exploration. The Northwest Passage runs until 11 March 2017.