Category: Antique Maps

Old Logging Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

North Country Public Radio’s Adirondack Attic: “Jerry Pepper, librarian at the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, shows Andy Flynn a collection of maps that detail logging operations by the Finch Pruyn paper company in the town of Newcomb. The maps were used from the 1920s to about 1950, the year of the last river drive carrying logs from the Adirondack Mountains down the Hudson River.” [Tony Campbell]

My county’s archives has a collection of old logging maps; I blogged about them in 2007.

Upcoming Symposium: Reimagining the Globe and Cultural Exchange

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Further to my post about China at the Center, the exhibition of rare maps now taking place at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco: Mark Stephen Mir, who wrote the exhibition catalogue’s chapter on the Verbiest map, writes to share the following about a symposium coming up later this month: Reimagining the Globe and Cultural Exchange: From the World Maps of Ricci and Verbiest to Google Earth. 

The Ricci Institute is hosting a series of events connected with our exhibition China at the Center at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. One of these events is an international symposium held at the University of San Francisco April 22-24 with extra events at the AAM and in the Manresa Gallery on the USF campus. The topic of the symposium concerns the history of East-West scientific exchange through the medium of cartography beginning with ancient maps and continuing to the present with the latest technological innovations. Internationally known specialists in cartography and East-West cultural exchange will be invited to share their research, while experts from Google and NASA will discuss the latest technological developments in enriching our knowledge of the world and the cosmos.

Registration on-site is $85, or free for students and USF faculty and staff. The program has been posted online (PDF).

Previously: China at the Center.

Original Salt Lake Plat Map Found

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

“A New York dealer in antique maps and rare books claims to have found the first map of Salt Lake City,” writes Trent Toone of the Deseret News. “Paul Cohen, of Cohen and Taliaferro, recently obtained the original sheepskin plat map of the ‘Great City of the Valley of the Great Salt Lake’ and plans to have it on display at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair, which runs April 7-10.” The 21½×11¼-inch sheepskin map was produced during an 1847 survey. [WMS]

Conserving Old Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

On the National Library of Scotland’s blog, a look at steps taken to conserve and repair two damaged 19th-century maps. “These case studies show some of the treatment options available for large maps, and demonstrate the challenging decisions that have to be made in order to care for the Library’s collections in their entirety. The principles at the heart of every conservation intervention are reversibility and retreatability, which ensure that we can always return to an object in the future if circumstances change.” [via]

David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford Opens April 19

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

In 2009 it was announced that map collector David Rumsey, whose eponymous website has been a must-visit for any map aficionado, would be donating his collection of 150,000 maps, plus digital copies, to Stanford University. Preparations to receive Rumsey’s collection began last summer. Now the David Rumsey Map Center is set to open—an event that will be marked with a reception on 19 April, the opening of an exhibition called A Universe of Maps: Opening the David Rumsey Map Center, and a series of presentations and workshops over the following two days. Speakers include Anne Knowles, Susan Schulten and Chet Van Duzer, among others, as well as Rumsey himself. [via]

Here’s a page previewing the Center. Here’s a short video:

Previously: Rumsey Donates Maps to Stanford.

Encountering Map Dealers: Hudson, Arader

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Atlas Obscura profiles map collector and dealer Murray Hudson. “Today, Murray Hudson owns what is said to be the largest private collection of for-sale antique maps, prints and globes in the world. His collection, held in Halls, Tennessee, contains, in addition to some 24,000 maps, over 6700 books, 2690 prints, and 760 globes.”

Last month the Wall Street Journal’s Ralph Gardner, Jr. reported on his visit to the Arader Galleries; it’s very much a first-time-experience kind of narrative that is noteworthy for the complete absence of Graham Arader (except in the comments), whose presence usually looms quite large in stories about map collecting. [via]

Women in Cartography (Part 3)

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
willard-1826
Emma Hart Willard, “Ninth Map or Map of 1826,” in A Series of Maps to Willard’s History of The United States (New York, 1829). Library of Congress Geography and Map Division.

CityLab’s Laura Bliss has a second post on women and cartography, this time focusing on the work of 19th-century women cartographers, geographers and educators in the United States. The Library of Congress’s map blog, Worlds Revealed, focuses on the work (and maps) of one of those women, Emma Hart Willard.

Previously: Women in Cartography; Women in Cartography (Continued).

Talking About Map Thefts

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Here’s a profile of Thomas Durrer, the University of Virginia detective assigned to the Gilbert Bland map theft case, in the spring 2016 issue of Virginia, the university’s alumni magazine. [via]

map-thief island-lost-mapsBland’s career predated Forbes Smiley’s (he lacked Smiley’s ostensible pedigree) and was the focus of Miles Harvey’s 2000 book The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime (Amazon, iBooks).

Smiley was, of course, the subject of Michael Blanding’s 2014 book The Map Thief (Amazon, iBooks; see my review). Blanding is on a bit of a campus speaking tour at the moment, discussing the Smiley case. He’s at the University of Florida tonight, the University of Miami tomorrow night, and more college campuses in April and May.

Women in Cartography (Continued)

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

wac-cartographerOn the Library of Congress’s map blog, a post about the women cartographers employed by the military and government during World War II—the so-called “Military Mapping Maidens.”

The Guardian has a brief item on ocean mapper Marie Tharp.

CityLab’s Laura Bliss presents a selection of maps by women mapmakers like Mary Ann Roque, the Haussard sisters and Shanawdithit, the last known member of the Beothuk people.

Previously: Women in Cartography.

1853 Texas Map Bought for $10, Sells for $10,000

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

manning-texas

A copy of an 1853 map of Texas by Jacob de Cordova found in a $10 box of ragtime sheet music sold at auction last weekend for $10,000. The map, once owned by surveyor James M. Manning, who died in 1872, was bought, along with a related letter, by Texas A&M University—Corpus Christi, whose library houses the Manning papers. [via]

International Workshop on Portolan Charts

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
maggiolo-portolan
Vesconte Maggiolo, Portolan chart, 1541. Kartenabteilung der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.

The program for the First International Workshop on the Origin and Evolution of Portolan Charts, which takes place 5-6 June 2016 in Lisbon, Portugal, is now live. The conference focuses on the history of portolan charts and the analytical techniques used to study them. [via]

La Carte de Cassini

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

carte-cassini

There are several online versions of the Carte générale de France, the first comprehensive map of France produced by the Cassini family in the 18th century. Some, like those hosted by the EHESS and the David Rumsey Map Collection, georectify and stitch together the individual maps together to make a more-or-less seamless whole. On Gallica, the Bibliothèque nationale de France’s digital library, it’s presented as individual sheets; the Library of Congress does the same with its copy—the better to appreciate the originals, I suppose. [via]

The Boston Globe on #MapMonsterMonday

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

#MapMonsterMonday makes the Boston Globe, in a piece looking at how the Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map Center curates their weekly posts of map monsters on Twitter and Instagram. (An example below.) Though, to be fair, there are several map library Twitter accounts participating in #MapMonsterMonday. [via]