Cartographic Japan: A History in Maps came out last month from the University of Chicago Press. It’s a collection of 58 academic essays edited by Kären Wigen, Sugimoto Fumiko and Cary Karacas (see the table of contents) that provide, in the words of the publisher, “close analysis of one hundred maps from the late 1500s to the present day, each one treated as a distinctive window onto Japan’s tumultuous history.” Amazon, iBooks. [WMS]
Category: Antique Maps
The Golden Age of American Pictorial Maps
The Golden Age of American Pictorial Maps is an exhibition running until 3 September 2016 at the University of Southern Maine’s Osher Map Library. (If you can’t go there physically, there’s plenty online at the link, too.) “Curated by Dr. Stephen J. Hornsby, co-editor of the Historical Atlas of Maine [previously] and author of a forthcoming book on American pictorial maps, this exhibit looks at the golden age of pictorial or illustrated maps from the 1920s to the 1960s. Reflecting the exuberance of American popular culture and the creativity of commercial art, the maps are stimulating to the imagination and dazzling to the eye.” [WMS]
Related reading: The Art of Illustrated Maps by John Roman (previously).
Vancouver Archives Digitizing Old Maps
The City of Vancouver Archives: “Thanks to funding from the British Columbia History Digitization Program, we’ve recently completed a project to digitize over 2100 maps and plans and made them available online for you to use and re-use. We’ve tried to digitize these maps with enough resolution to support future types of re-use and processing, including optical character recognition and feature extraction.” A selection is available on Flickr. [WMS]
De Wit’s Planisphærium Cœleste
As part of its regular “Map Monday” feature, Atlas Obscura looks closely at Frederick de Wit’s Planisphærium cœleste (1670), above. Like other celestial maps of the period, it’s as though the monsters on sea charts have been placed in the skies—especially true for constellations like Cetus, as the article shows.
This reminds me that there’s quite a lot about antique celestial maps in The Map Room’s archives: The Face of the Moon; Star Atlases; Historical Celestial Atlases on the Web; The U.S. Naval Observatory’s Celestial Atlases; Divine Sky: The Artistry of Astronomical Maps; Another Look at the Linda Hall Library’s Celestial Atlases; Christian Constellations.
A book about celestial maps, Nick Kanas’s Star Maps: History, Artistry and Cartography, is now in its second edition (Springer, 2012). I own a copy of the first edition.
Previously about Frederick de Wit: A New Book About Frederick de Wit.
Old Logging Maps
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.
PRI’s The World on #MapMonsterMonday
Another look at #MapMonsterMonday: This afternoon, Dory Klein of the Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map Center spoke with Public Radio International’s The World about sea monsters on old maps.
Previously: The Boston Globe on #MapMonsterMonday; Bailey Henderson’s Sea Monster Sculptures.
Upcoming Symposium: Reimagining the Globe and Cultural Exchange
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
“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
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
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
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]
Apologetic Thief Returns Maps to MSU
Michigan State University’s Map Library received an anonymous package in the mail yesterday . . .
We received an anonymous package in the mail today. pic.twitter.com/UvNxZNRn3R
— MSU Map Library (@MSUMapLib) March 28, 2016
There’s a story here, and it’ll almost certainly never be told.
Women in Cartography (Part 3)
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
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]
Bland’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)
On 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.