Hollar’s Hull: the original copper plate.

I’m often asked how maps were printed in the hand-press period. And the (short) answer is that that between the late fifteenth and the early nineteenth-centuries, the finest results were obtained by taking impressions, one at a time, from etched and/or engraved metal plates, which were usually made of copper. The next question, sometimes, is to ask me if there is anything to stop people using these plates to turn out facsimiles today.

There is plenty one can say about early paper stocks and original hand-colour, but the shortest answer (again) is that very few original copper-plates have come down to us. Copper (then, as now) was a valuable raw material. There were very few incentives not to melt down and re-use plates which were worn or carried out-of-date information. Some copper plates had long lives, but once their commercial usefulness was over, if even ‘antiquarian’ interest was exhausted, they went into the melting pot.

But every now and again there is an exception.

Bohemian artist and etcher Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) was probably the greatest exponent of his craft active in mid seventeenth-century England. He arrived in London in 1636, was a Royalist during the Civil Wars and took temporary refuge in Antwerp, but he returned to London in 1650, and following the Restoration he was appointed ‘Scenographer or designer of Prospects to the King’. He died in penury, “owning little more than his bed and a few pots and pans” (Worms/Baynton-Williams Dictionary of Map Engravers, Rare Book Society 2011; NB, if you are a librarian, collector or dealer and don’t have this book by now, shame on you). If you haven’t guessed by now, it is one of Hollar’s plates, his map of Kingston-upon-Hull, engraved c. 1642, which I have just purchased.   

W. Hollar fecit, his signature.

The scholarly importance of the plate lies in the clues it might offer us about Hollar’s working techniques. I suspect that there is much work to be done on that score. But there is also a thrill in handling the skilfully worked metal which Hollar created with his own hands 370 years ago, the very plate which each and every subsequent impression was pulled from, the same plate which sat in the shops of Robert Sayer and Robert Laurie and James Whittle. There is something of the relic hunter in us all, perhaps! But before considering the transmission of the plate in detail, here it is in its entirety:

In the upper part of the plate is a view of the city and its fortifications taken from the Humber; there is an inset map of the general environs, and Hollar’s own signature can be seen bottom centre, below the town plan itself. All delicately etched and, of course, everything is reversed. Working with acid must have been second nature to a seasoned professional like Hollar, and mirror writing something he could do in his sleep, but the workmanship of a plate like this demands enormous respect from a layman like me.   

Very few of Hollar’s original plates are known to have survived. Richard Pennington attempts a census in his Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Wenceslaus Hollar (CUP 1982, p. lii). Hollar produced numerous maps but, leaving this plate of Hull aside, no others are listed - although there are a handful of topographical views. Hollar’s famous prospect of London before and after the Great Fire would be among the most impressive, but although Pennington was aware that it had surfaced in the London trade, its current whereabouts were unknown to him. This then, could be a unique surviving example of a cartographic copperplate in Hollar’s hand.     

The map forms item 984 in Pennington’s Catalogue; in terms of the transmission of the plate, Pennington notes that the map was still being offered in the late eighteenth-century, appearing in printseller Robert Sayer’s catalogue of 1766 and in Laurie & Whittle’s of 1795. Also in the 1790’s an entirely new plate, following Hollar’s map, was engraved by Isaac Taylor (1759-1829 - being the second of the two Isaacs in Worms/Baynton-Williams) which was used to illustrate John Tickell’s The History of the town and country of Kingston-upon-Hull. However, the original copperplate is known to have survived: it still existed in 1933, when it was in the possession of Hull printing firm Richard Johnson & Sons. And, if I’m right, I’m looking at it now.

UPDATE, November 8: Really excellent news. The plate has found a permanent home in the national map collection at the British Library - which is where such a unique and potentially illuminating fragment of British cartographic history really belongs. Pinda and I carried it over this morning, and rare maps curator Tom Harper and colleagues were genuinely thrilled. From now on it will be available for anyone who is researching Hollar (and I can visit it myself) and Tom tells me that after cleaning (I didn’t get out the duraglit …) it may be displayed to the public in the Sir John Ritblat Gallery, which houses a permanent display of the treasures of the British Library. The rediscovery of the plate may also be in time for inclusion in Simon Turner’s updated edition of Pennington.  

UPDATE: March 2 2013: thanks to Tom Harper and the professional photographers at the BL, this image of the printing plate, a vast improvement on my own:

Finger marks more in evidence but far less glare …

Map cover art

Have you ever bought a map for its cover? I’m not immune to vintage marketing, and I’ve bought one or two really dull maps because the cover design was simply irresistible. There are one or two map series with uniform (and uniformly tedious) cover art, but often just as much thought went into the design of the cover as into, say, the design of dustwrappers or paperback cover art. I have a feeling I’ll be coming back to this topic, but here’s just a taste.

Cover art has a long history. Walker’s New Geographical Game exhibiting a tour through Europe was published in 1810 by William Darton and his son Thomas. The cover shows Europeans - including, of course, an Ottoman Turk - seated on crates and barrels (trade) in front of a strategically placed rock (for the title; a bit of foliage spilling over, all quite wild and romantic) and with ships in the background. The date of engraving is given as September 1809, but the engraver himself remains anonymous. Surveyor Thomas Dix’s map of Bedfordshire, published in 1830 by William Darton (working on his own again), has a fine printed label on the slipcase: an engraved template derived from the royal coat of arms which could be overprinted in red with the name of the correct county. It would do for the whole series.

By the mid nineteenth-century cover designs were more likely to be blocked in gilt directly onto cloth covers, rather than appearing on separately applied paper labels. On the left is an 1856 example of A & C Black’s Road and Railway Travelling Map of England, with steam engine and mail coach (and price) worked into the design. On the right is a locally published map of Cornwall, of similar vintage, engraved by W.W. Rundell of Falmouth and published by W. Wood, Devonport; St Michael’s Mount appears on the cover.

Paper covers/labels seem to have made a come-back later in the century - both of these county maps date from the 1880s. Again, they are standard cover desgns (I can just about envisage someone riding a penny farthing in Bedfordshire, but there’s precious little mountain walking to be had in those parts). 

I rather like these turn of the century maps by G.W. Bacon. No solitary cyclists here. A great way to meet the opposite sex, but beware of danger hills.

This is an 1895 edition of J.F. Bennet’s Map and ABC Guide to the River Thames (I have had 1880’s editions with the same artwork). A sturdy gentleman in striped jersey is gallantly rowing two ladies with parasols. Despite the gender differences, this is real Three Men in a Boat stuff: just the sort of map a Harris or a George might have the forethought to purchase, with details of locks, fishing rights, inns and train fares, as well a general places of interest.

This is an 1898 issue of the District Railway Map of London (1st state of the 6th edition). Not really convenient for commuters, it’s a huge folding map with the new underground railways (completed, under construction and proposed) overprinted on a detailed street plan of the capital. The cover shows places of interest (the Monument, Cleopatra’s Needle etc) but I particularly like the steam engine emerging from a tunnel beneath the legend ‘Time is Money’. One could avoid the congested streets above - a major draw - though straplines like this are conspicuously absent from modern TfL advertising. Early underground locomotives were indeed steam, and I have read early c.20 accounts by people who resented electrification because they missed the smoke and sparks - must have been truly alarming in a confined space.

The Ordnance Survey art is particularly well documented (see John Paddy Brown, Map Cover Art, OS, 1991), and already collected in its own right. These, OS and AA, date to the 1920s and actually show maps in use; all three OS covers are by Ellis Martin:

The map of the Lake District shows Derwentwater from Skiddaw.

On the left are 1930s British railway maps, LNER and LMS, by Frank Newbould and ‘Bell’ respectively, and by way of contrast the map on the right is from 1940s L.A. A bit late for Metropolis, but still very Art Deco, and American Art Deco at that. It makes me start thinking of Raymond Chandler novels rather than P.G. Wodehouse (although, famously, they both went to Dulwich College).

And finally (for now), a cover from British Mandate-era Jersualem, drawn by F.T. Treitel and published by the Commercial Press c. 1942. Possibly one of the most ingenious covers we’ve looked at so far.

London Map Fair 2012

This year’s London Map Fair took place at the Royal Geographical Society on June 16th and 17th. If you follow my Tweets and Facebook ramblings (or spotted my name on the www.londonmapfairs.com website) you’ll know that I’m one of fair organisers, along with fellow mapsellers Massimo de Martini and Rainer Voigt. It’s the largest specialist map fair in Europe, and on those two days in June there isn’t another place on earth where one could find so many original antique maps gathered for sale under one roof. The RGS has the ideal roof too, with distinguished explorers from Cook to Burton keeping a watchful eye from the canvasses which line the walls. I normally blog about the antique maps themselves rather than the trade, but now that the dust is starting to settle (and I’m finally catching up on lost sleep) I thought a quick round-up of this year’s fair might be of interest. If you missed it this year, come next time.

Excellent press coverage contributed to a surge in visitor numbers, which were up by an astonishing 38%. The fair has never been so busy, and although average sales were slightly down on last year (hardly surprising), the general public accounted for 39% of the take and softened the effect of cautious buying by the trade.

Calm before the opening. Kevin primed and ready for the first wave …

… which looked something like this. One of the best things about the fair in its current location is that every year I’ve been able to sell someone their first map. It’s the same logic behind having a ground floor shop. Maps are intrinsically interesting - really - but it’s hard to get a sense of what’s really out there through online searches alone, and nothing beats face-to-face conversations with people who know their onions, and know them with a passion. As well as a concentration of maps, the fair is a concentration of expertise: exhibitors and visiting trade, curators and collectors from all corners of the world. An ideal place to dip a toe in the water.      

The fair was again full to capacity with 37 leading international dealers and three other related stands. We were pleased to provide a stand to IMCoS, as always, and for the first time the RGS itself had a presence, and a special map fair membership offer.

The lecture on London’s lost or (more properly) hidden rivers by our guest speaker Stephen Myers was deservedly well attended, as was the usual ‘House’ tour of the RGS itself and the series of informal talks on beginning a map collection by dealer and author Ashley Baynton-Williams, an innovation which we hope to repeat.

In lieu of anything better, here’s a really bad photo of a cross section of the audience, waiting for Stephen’s talk to begin. Stephen is a professional water engineer, and he has used his technical expertise to inform his reading of archaeological and literary source material - including maps - as well as carrying out his own on-site surveys. We heard some remarkable new insights into the original courses of London’s rivers (Tyburn, Fleet etc) and their role in the development of the city. He has identified a completely new, western branch of the Walbrook and, in the archives of the Charterhouse, he located the original pipeline diagram made by the mediaeval Cistercian monks who drained it; their need for fresh water (having built their monastery on a plague pit) had far reaching consequences, including the draining of the marsh north of Moorgate. Buy his book, ‘Walking on Water’; I read it cover-to-cover.

Many exhibitors commented on the number of younger people at the fair, often buying their first map or maps. Articles in the Financial Times, Observer and The Times undoubtedly helped to raise awareness of the fair. We had overseas coverage in periodicals such as the Italian Vanity Fair, a spot on Monocle Radio and coverage in online journals such as Fine Books Magazine, but perhaps the most noticeable aspect of the online activity were the numbers of private individuals, unconnected with the fair, who were sharing plans to visit the fair and details of their purchases on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Heads down, browsing, by Garwood & Voigt’s stand.

The next London Map fair is scheduled to take place on the weekend of 8-9 June 2013. As always there will be thousands of maps, charts, plans, atlases and globes, printed between the fifteenth and the twentieth centuries, covering all regions of the world and priced to suit all pockets, from £10 to £100,000; one still doesn’t have to be among the super-rich to start a collection, which is why there’s no such thing as a ‘typical’ map collector. Come along.

Words can’t express my relief that the rain held off. Here’s a rare early c.19 library globe being loaded up after the fair. You see why I was worried.

ABA President Laurence Worms wrote a glowing account from a vsitor’s perspective on his President on Safari blog:

http://ashrarebooks.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/the-ducking-stool/

Nate Pedersen wrote for Fine Books Magazine:

http://www.finebooksmagazine.com/fine_books_blog/2012/06/the-london-map-fair.phtml

Nick Crane for the Financial Times:

We also had a piece by Gemma Kappala-Ramsamy in the Observer:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/gallery/2012/jun/10/antique-maps-fair-royal-geographic?CMP=twt_gu

There was also a piece by Huon Mallalieu in the Times; one would need to subsscribe to read it, but it’s easy to find.

The Dollar Octopus, 1942

High time for another cartographic cephalopod. This one by Dutch artist Louis Emile Manche (1908-82) arrived in the shop just too late for this year’s London Map Fair, but I’m still pleased to have located an original example.

Compare and contrast with Pat Keely’s Japanese octopus, made to boost morale among the Free Dutch in 1944, which I blogged about last December: http://timbryars.tumblr.com/post/14821537264/the-indies-must-be-free-japan-is-cast-as-an-especially

Lou Manche designed a number of posters for the NSB (Dutch National Socialist party) and his octopus carries a pro-Axis message. In the immediate postwar period Manche found himself interned with other Dutch collaborators in Kamp Vught, the former concentration camp.

A dollar symbol represents America’s financial power, and the tentacles bear the dates of American expansion, formal and informal, from the Mexican-American War onwards. The tentacle linking the US with the Philippines (dated 1898 for the Spanish-American War) has already been severed by a samurai sword, bearing the rising sun on its grip. Japanese aircraft menace the west coast, and indeed the only air raid on US soil (by a single aircraft) took place in September 1942. Submarines, both Japanese and German, were more of a problem. The German U-boat menace to US shipping off the east coast was real and is well-documented.

There are at least two settings of the text. This version casts the US as an imperialist power, accusing it of sheltering behind the Monroe Doctrine (which sought to exlude European powers from expanding/regaining colonies in the Americas) when convenient, but actually obeying the law of the jungle, and planting the US flag wherever ‘the Yankees’ feel like it. That deals with the tentacles. The US is also accused of fighting with dollars, not bullets, and profiting from European wars; the dollar is at the heart of the last paragraph: ‘the gold of the international plutocracy [a phrase used here with anti-semitic connotations], concentrated in Fort Knox, is besieged by the irresistible armies of the young [ie Axis] nations, by the armies of the workers’.     

The poster was approved by the Propaganda Section of the Department for People’s Information and the Arts, located in Den Haag. A Dutch friend tells me that Dutch artists were required to sign a document declaring allegiance to the fascist regime. Many refused, and many were interned for the duration in Kamp Vught; the artists who signed, like Manche, exchanged places with them at the end of the war.

The View from Japan, 1904

A very scarce satirical map, and one which I anticipate will be passing through my hands pretty quickly. However, as temporary custodian I can’t resist sharing it. It’s a delight.

Cartoon or satirical world maps are an unusual form in general, and only one institutional example of this particular map has been located (the Bodleian Library has a copy, part of the John Johnson collection of ephemera). ‘NEW COMICAL ATLAS - WHAT THE ANIMALS OF THE WORLD SAY’ by Kamijo Yomotaro was published in Tokyo in June 1904, a few months into the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. It was the first victory of an Asian power over a European in modern times. Russia suffered a series of humiliating defeats on land and sea (the Admiralty presented a lock of Nelson’s hair to the Japanese navy in recognition of the scale of their victory at Tsushima, likened to Trafalgar). The consequences were far reaching: Russian prestige was severely damaged and Japan entered the ranks of the Great Powers. And yet, many Japanese felt that the terms of the peace treaty were over-cautious, and that they had not been treated as equals. Mistrust of the West grew. That all lies in the future, so let’s see what the animals were saying in 1904.

The Chinese pig, Turkish pheasant, Hungarian hen and Persian quail are all in danger from the claws of the double-headed Russian eagle; that is, until the Japenese Golden Kite swoops to their rescue. The American tiger looks on approvingly. The explanatory text is given in English as well as Japanese (for export?) and the tiger says: “By Jove, that Golden Kite is small, but if he isn’t strong and generous! I have nothing but admiration for him”. The peace treaty was eventually signed in the US, and President Roosevelt’s mediation earned him a Nobel Peace Prize.

The British hawk is also portrayed in a positive light: “I was rather surprised at Our Chum, Golden Kite being so brave and gallant. Get at the Eagle, friend. We station ourselves at Gibraltar and at Suez, so that in spite of his audacity, Mr. Eagle can’t swoop from that direction; we are always behind you in the case of a danger. So give him a good everlasting lesson with full hands.” The French owl is dismayed at Russian weakness, and the German bear resolves to keep quiet.

The lion of British India is a magnificent beast, looking warily towards Russian expansion in central Asia (‘that avaricious Eagle better take care of what he does. If he ever put his claws on the Elephant [Tibet], I will tear him to pieces’), and the Arabian camel is a delightful touch, making excellent use of the geographical space.

Mercator’s ‘Septentrionalium Terrarum descriptio’: mapping the Northern lands.

Another old friend for your consideration. Mercator’s depiction of the Arctic regions and North Pole (Septentrionalium Terrarum descriptio) remains perennially popular with collectors and scholars alike. Perhaps I’m coming too late to the table for fresh analysis of the content, but few maps capture the problems faced by early cartographers quite so well. The basic configuration of the islands was not wholly original, but Mercator was the first to devote a separate copper-plate to a map of the Arctic; he had tough decisions to make when sifting evidence gathered thousands of miles from his home in Duisburg, some of which also reached back across several centuries (to the age of Arthur, if the sources were to be trusted). This is a map by one of the greatest cartographers of his own or any other age (variants of Mercator’s projection are still in use, even by the latest online street mapping services) and yet there’s a rich vein of myths and legend blended - seemingly without prejudice - among genuine discoveries. It’s so very wrong.

First issued in 1595 by Mercator’s son, Rumold, shortly after Mercator’s death; our example was printed from the second state of the plate in 1623, and it was hand-coloured at the time.

In reality there isn’t even a landmass at the Pole. But allowing for the fact that the region was largely unknown (Ross and Parry launched the modern era of Arctic exploration in the second decade of the nineteenth-century, and Peary - probably - reached it for the first time as recently as 1909) how did Mercator ever imagine it looked like this?

At the Pole itself he shows a naturally occurring magnetic (lodestone) mountain, the Rupes nigra or black rock - an ancient idea. Surrounding it is a powerful whirlpool, drawing off water from all the seas of the world and sucking it deep into the earth. The whirlpool is fed by four rivers with formidable currents (note the deltas which ought, I suppose, to be at the mouths of the rivers closest to the whirlpool, if the normal laws of geography are observed) and these rivers divide the surrounding landmass into four islands. Pygmies, four feet tall, are said to inhabit the island closest to Europe - possibly a folk memory of the people the Norse settlers of Greenland called Skraelings, the ancestors of the Inuit. 

Mercator is careful to cite his sources. Unfortunately all are lost to us, their contents known chiefly from Mercator’s own summary in a letter he sent to John Dee (and from later maps, including Mercator’s own). Mercator had read Jacobus Cnoyen’s Itinerarium, a work drawing on the Res gestae Arturi britanni but principally a summary of the Inventio fortunata. The latter text was allegedly composed by an Oxford Friar in the fourteenth-century (probably not Nicholas of King’s Lynn, as Mercator supposed) who compiled a report of his travels in the far north and possibly created a map of his own. The underlying assumption was that King Arthur had sent settlers to the Arctic, and the author of the Inventio fortunata had met their descendants. It was a convenient intellectual justification for Elizabethan and Jacobean seafarers, exploring the region in search of the Northwestern and Northeastern passages to Asia. 

From separate (Italian) sources we have the mythical island of Frisland, confused with Greenland, Iceland and the Faroes, but here shown south west of Iceland and wholly imaginary.

There is some excellent map-making going on here. Mercator was aware of the latest discoveries by Martin Frobisher and John Davis. And note the revisions by Hondius affecting the region north of Russia (Hondius owned Mercator’s plates by this time and made a commercial success of the Atlas. Our example is this second, revised state; to compare it with the first, here’s the Princeton copy: http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/northwest-passage/mercator.htm.) The coastline of Nova Zembla has been amended and, at the centre of the map, part of the lower right-hand island of the four flanking the Pole has been burnished out altogether; a truncated coastline has been tentatively dotted back in, separating off Greenland and allowing space for new discoveries just north of (Hugh) Willoughby’s Land (another fictitious island). And yet, whatever tinkering Hondius carried out, he allowed Mercator’s basic concept to stand and continued to publish the map. He may have found errors in the detail, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary a map based on a series of lost manuscripts (even Cnoyen’s account had vanished by Hondius’ day) continued to appear in the most modern atlases.

This wasn’t just the view from Duisburg/Amsterdam. It might seem highly unlikely to us that King Arthur despatched thousands of his countrymen to the Arctic, and the garbled travel account of a mediaeval Oxford scholar seems a slender thread to trust with one’s life, but for Elizabethan/Jacobean Englishmen these were valuable precedents for their own hazardous voyages of discovery, in search of the supposed Northwestern and Northeastern Passages which are depicted with such certainty on Mercator’s map. The prize was rich enough: a fast route to China and the Indies, free from Spanish or Portuguese competition, and if Englishmen had navigated those waters before then so much the better. To modern eyes Mercator’s blend of historical, and one might even say literary sources, with reports from navigators of his own age (some more reliable than others) seems curious and archaic. We expect nothing short of total accuracy from our own maps. Early modern readers, by contrast, were accustomed to the idea of reading a map on several different levels.  

Pictorial plans of London: MacDonald Gill and beyond.

This post is something of a work in progress, so please check back now and again to see if I’ve been able to expand it. So far I’ve tried to avoid some of the most well-known maps, but in this instance there’s no excuse for not beginning with MacDonald Gill’s playful and eccentric Wonderground map of London. Apologies if you know it already, but it always repays another look:

Gill’s map was commissioned by London Transport in 1913, and was so successful that it was offered for sale to the general public the following year. The map I have here is an example of that issue: The heart of Britain’s Empire here is spread out for your view … You have not time to admire it all? Why not take a map home to pin on your wall! And of course, most purchasers took Gill’s advice and did just that, which is why it has become scarce today …

With this map Gill inspired a whole genre of comic map-making, filling his map with poems, puns and in-jokes (some bad, a few inexplicable). One needs hours to ‘admire it all’ (unscramble might be a better word). Here’s how Gill treated one of my favourite places in London, the zoo:

It’s a much more entertaining way of showing how the Underground Stations relate to surface topography than anything dreamt up previously, but the style is better suited to pleasure than business and I note that most maps of this genre focus on West London rather than the City or the East End. The blend of old and new seems typically Edwardian, summed up in this detail from the upper left corner:

The curvature of the horizon is decidedly medieval (Arts and Crafts, anyway), while the aeroplane and motorized omnibus bring us firmly into the Twentieth Century. The speech bubbles are Gill’s own. 

Gill went on to create further maps for London Transport, including a series of ‘straight’ pocket Underground maps in the 1920s; he also designed the font used on headstones by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and numerous posters for bodies such as the Empire Marketing Board. I suspect that he was more commercially successful than his brother, Eric. A new carto-bibliography of his work is expected soon (following last year’s MacDonald Gill exhibition in Brighton), and in the meantime I refer you to Elisabeth Burdon’s excellent article: http://hq.abaa.org/books/antiquarian/news_fly?code=96

I’d like to devote the rest of this post to other maps which were show clear signs of being influnced by Gill’s work. This map is more blatant than most:

Published by Alexander Gross’s firm, Geographia Ltd in the 1930s, it’s unsigned.

The visual and verbal puns (the long arm of the law reaching out from Scotland Yard, the ink spilled on Fleet Street …) and historical and topographical notes are typical of Gill’s work. But it certainly isn’t. Mind you, it was popular enough for Geographia to issue it in jigsaw form:

This is the standard Geographia London Pictorial Map, published in numerous editions between the 1920s and 1950s:

Not terribly inventive, perhaps, but worth including as the early post-war editions are among the only maps to show the blitzed area in the City of London:

The area left blank on the map had almost reverted to the heathland it had been centuries before, carpeted with rosebay willowherb and ragwort. Some streets could only be identified from temporary wooden signboards. Leaving the map blank seems entirely logical - it’s surprising how few cartographers followed suit.

Here’s Leslie Bullock’s Children’s Map of London, c. 1938:

Bullock worked closely with Edinburgh publisher John Bartholomew and Son over a long period. All royalties for this map were donated to Great Ormond Street Hospital. In the margins are nursery rhyme scenes and the map is flanked by the Biblical giants Gog and Magog, long associated with London.

There are scattered quotations, but the map is not as crowded as Gill’s (I suspect Bullock lacked Gill’s talent for whimsical quippery). However, there are echoes of Gill’s work here - I doubt Bullock’s map would have existed without it. I’m also going to include Kennedy North’s 1923 British Empire Exhibition map:

North’s debt is principally calligraphic - the lettering is clearly inspired by Gill’s 1920s Underground maps - although one might also look at the bold use of colour and details such as the buses, cars and trams. Note North’s impressive attempt to reduce the Underground system to diagramatic form almost a decade before Harry Beck.

I’ve been assuming that Kennedy North is Stanley Kennedy North: artist, illustrator, picture restorer, socialist, folk dancer and general bohemian. Commercial work (e.g. for Shell Oil) seems to be signed simply ‘Kennedy North’, but it seems unlikely that there would be two similarly named artists working at the same time. If I spot a definite link I’ll update this entry. [Update May 2012: two members of the artist’s family have been in touch to confrim that this is indeed SKN; he made other maps - possibly another post to follow.] 

The unusual thing about this reduced, pocket version of Kerry Lee’s poster is the way it’s folded. A customer in my shop pulled out a very similar (modern) map of London only the other day. The ‘uniquefold’ patent is dated 1948, which ties in with the reference to British Railways (nationalised in that year). 

Here is an early 1950s pictorial map by Francis Chichester (aviator, yachtsman and map-maker), again in jigsaw form:

Chichester had initially bought up surplus wartime Air Ministry maps and turned them into jigsaws (possibly among the most joyless age of austerity toys ever, though I’d still like to find one). However, this one of Chichester’s original maps. Significant landmarks are shown pictorially, but there are no puns.  

And finally, The Daily Telegraph Picture Map of London, probably 1950s:

Designed by Vale Studios for Geographia, it is entirely distinct from the Telegraph’s 1947 Royal Wedding map by Zadwill and Gray, which I’ve illustrated here: http://bit.ly/KDQwD5. Here’s a detail:

More to follow as I find them!

The course of true love …

I’m not much of a one for Valentine’s Day in the ordinary run of things, but I feel like making a special effort this year. So here are one or two whimsical ‘maps of matrimony’ - a popular nineteenth century genre which seems to have fallen by the wayside. You can make up your own mind as to whether that’s a good thing or not. Here’s a hand-drawn example:

The ragged coastline bears a passing resemblance to south western England and Wales - perhaps the ghost of a geography lesson (copying out maps was quite common in the schoolroom). At the top (north?) of the map we come first to the ‘Quicksands of Censure’ the ‘Isles of Temerity’ and the ‘United States of Agitation’ before passing through the ‘Province of Jewellers & Milliners’ and the ‘Mountains of Delay, inhabited by Lawyers’. Heading south we finally reach the ‘Port of Hymen’ which is located in the ‘Electorate of Bridesmaids’ (is it just me, or is that highly suspicious?) rather than the ‘Region of Rejoicing’. Crossing the Gulf of Matrimony and the River of Congratulation we reach … Petticoat Government.

Here’s a popular postcard on the same lines, c. 1900:

The principal tributaries of the Truelove River, the rivers Edwin and Angelina, have their sources in (respectively) Indifference Hill and Fancy Free Plateau. Once joined, they pass through Evasion Rapids, Sentimental Meadow, Separation Deep, Misery Marsh etc before emerging into Altar Bay and Honeymoon Island. Angrysire sounds best avoided …

If all this is getting a bit sugary for you, here’s French caricaturist Paul Hadol’s take on the state of love and marriage in France in 1869:

In map circles Hadol is probably best remembered for the satirical map of Europe he created on the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, but as this map prepared for weekly magazine L’Eclipse shows, it wasn’t the only time he toyed with cartographic imagery. His imaginary island is laid out in the traditional heart-shape, but on closer inspection the inhabitants prove terribly worldy. The island is split into three provinces by the rivers Absinthe, Gold Mine and Reconnaissance, which rather sets the tone. 

‘Tenderness’ is a woman hurling a (full) soup tureen at her husband, and only if one can navigate La Mer Dangereuse, past the suicide rocks, can one hope to reach ‘the unknown country of the Good Woman’ … I do hope someone bought M. Hadol a giant plush teddy bear that year.

Here’s another detail:

Only because I thought it would be more fun to leave you all with Billets doux and Grand Esprit …

Lend me ten Pounds and I’ll buy you a drink …

For many people January is the season of moderation, and some particularly hardy souls (I’m told) even contemplate abstinence. Certain strands of the British media have coined and attempted to popularise the toe-curlingly awful term ‘Janopause’ to describe this practice, and if that’s not enough to have one reaching for a corkscrew I don’t know what is. Anyway, it seems like the perfect time to cover maps about pubs. Actually, Charles Booth’s map of London at the turn of the Twentieth Century lumps in churches and schools as well, but the truly innovative element of the map is the detailed treatment of the licensed premises, sub divided into five carefully defined categories:

And here’s the map, London 1899-1900:

Booth’s pioneering sociological work Life and Labour of the People in London is justly famous for its colour-coded ‘poverty maps’, illustrating the ‘general condition’ of Londoners on a street by street basis, from the wealthiest members of society (coloured a reassuring yellow) to those categorised by Booth as the ‘vicious, semi-criminal’ poor (coloured black). However, I find this map, tucked into a pocket in the last volume of the third series (‘religious influences’, published in 1902) to be just as interesting. Pubs do appear on earlier maps, mostly as landmarks, but despite the growth of various temperance societies in the mid nineteenth-century I’m not aware of any earlier systematic treatment of the subject on this scale. Here’s a detail of the West End - enough of the pubs, thickly clustered though they are, are still there today:

And, by way of contrast, here are the licensed premises in York in 1902:

Booth wasn’t a temperance man himself. He believed in “self control and good sense” and was critical of the “unreasonableness” of those for whom “the whole trade is an abomination”, which he felt had made it more difficult to deal with the proliferation of licensed premises in a constructive manner: “Some, and I count myself among the number, would make it their first object to improve the character of the places where alcohol is sold. They recognise wide differences for good or evil in the various forms, as well as circumstances, in which alcohol may be taken”. Pretty sound, a century later.

As it happens, I’m rather a fan of Victorian temperance tracts. A Bowl of Cherries is about a working man whose wife and children never had enough to eat because he spent his wages in his local. One day there was a bowl of ripe cherries on the bar, but when he asked if he could take one the landlady slapped his hand away. He never drank again. That night, to the amazement of his family, there was fresh bread and meat on the table. He became sober and reliable and was promoted to foreman, and eventually he was able to buy a little cottage. It’s a lovely story. I’m also fond of Owen’s Hobby, about an annoying old servant (the titular Owen, whose ‘hobby’ is, of course, temperance) who is unable to save his young masters and mistresses from terrible drink-related fates - in one instance driving a carriage over a cliff after drinking off a glass of beer. Owen is generally on hand to shake his venerable head sadly. I’ve often thought I should collect these properly. 

Quantitative easing, bubbles, and a fool’s cap map

I’ve had a run of luck unearthing cartoon and satirical maps lately, which is why they have dominated the last couple of posts, and I might as well round off the old year with one more. As financial crises (well, one enormous financial crisis really) have dominated the headlines all year this Dutch map seems especially appropriate. Here’s how economic meltdown was handled three centuries ago:

This anonymously engraved map of the ‘famous fool’s head island’ (Afbeeldinge van’t zeer vermaarde Eiland Geks-Kop) was published in Amsterdam in 1720. It’s a Dutch take on the folly of their French neighbours, satirising the Louisiana Bubble. Not that anyone on this side of the Channel had anything to be smug about as the South Sea Bubble burst in the same year.    

There’s a bit more to quantitative easing than ‘printing money’, but the tale of John Law and the Louisiana Bubble is still a cautionary one. Law was a colourful Scottish financier who inveigled his way into the confidence of the Duke of Orleans (then Regent of France), and was permitted to set up the Mississippi Company, which controlled all trade with France’s vast and largely unexplored American possessions - believed to be rich in gold and silver. He established the Royal Bank and issued paper money based on the supposed value of shares in the company. Eventually he was minting French coinage, collecting taxes and controlling the French economy to an extraordinary extent. The value of the shares soared, the French economy boomed, more paper notes were issued and after a period of wild speculation confidence collapsed, ruining investors throughout Europe.

This map is rather different from any of the satirical maps covered in my earlier posts. Instead of working with an existing outline (coastline, political boundaries etc) our engraver has created a wholly imaginary ‘mad-head’ or ‘fool’s-head’ island resembling a human head with ass’s ears and wearing a fool’s cap, set in a sea of shares and inhabited by shareholders (discovered by Mr Law-rens). Cartographic features are given punning names such as the River Bubble, the Island of Despair and the town of ‘Madmandam’. Any resemblance to actual geography (Louisiana, the Mississippi …) is purely coincidental. As such it’s in the tradition of maps of Utopia, matrimony or even gastronomy, which use the power of cartography to express abstract concepts. Here’s a modern take on the idea, a map of the ‘Meaning of Physics’ which my friend Jeremy Wood made with author Mark Vernon: http://www.gpsdrawing.com/maps/meaning_of_physics.html    

Happy New Year everyone …

Update 21/02/12: Frank Jacobs has just covered this map in his entertaining and deservedly popular ‘Strange Maps’ blog (http://bigthink.com/ideas/42562?page=all) and a). he says very nice things about me and b). he emphasises - quite correctly - that the satire is general, despite the specific invocation of John Law in the title. The four rivers flowing from the island are the Seine, Thames, Meuse and ‘Bubbel’, representing France, England and the Netherlands … and folly in general.