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Autumn 2010 Number 122

For People Who Love Early Maps

journal

87528 IMCOS covers 2010.qxd:Layout 1 11/2/10 10:13 Page 3

THEMAP HOUSE

OF LONDON(established 1907)

Antiquarian Maps,Atlases,

Prints & Globes

54 BEAUCHAMP PLACE KNIGHTSBRIDGE LONDON SW3 1NYTelephone: 020 7589 4325 or 020 7584 8559

Fax: 020 7589 1041Email: [email protected]

www.themaphouse.com


1www.imcos.org

Journal of the International Map

Collectors’ Society

Founded 1980Autumn 2010 Issue No.122

Features

Feng Shui Maps: A chance discoveryby Kazumasa Yamashita

A Fine Hand: Cartographic and map playing cards 1590-1798by Yasha Beresiner

Worth a Look: The world in a fountain

An Extraordinary Atlas: The Klencke atlas at the British Library by Tom Harper

Crisis in Cartography: Three impediments to map and chart makingby Rodney Shirley

Regular items

A Letter From the IMCoS Chairmanby Hans Kok

From the Editor’s Deskby Valerie Newby

Mapping Matters

IMCoS Matters

You Write to Us

Book Reviews

Copy and other material for our next issue (Winter 2010) should besubmitted by 1st September 2010. Editorial items should be sent to:The Editor: Valerie Newby, Prices Cottage, 57 Quainton Road,North Marston, Buckingham MK18 3PR United Kingdom Tel.+44 (0)1296 670001 email: [email protected]: Jo French Illustration: Part of a Chinese map of the Bao family shrine see p.12

Advertising Manager: Jenny Harvey, 27 Landford Road,Putney, London SW15 1AQ United Kingdom Tel.+44 (0)20 8789 7358 email: [email protected] signed articles are the copyright of the author and must not be reproducedwithout the written consent of the author. Whilst every care is taken incompiling this journal, the Society cannot accept any responsibility for theaccuracy of the information included herein.

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A Letter From the

Imcos Chairman

This IMCoS Journal will now bein front of you just ahead of theInternational Symposium to beheld in London this year. It

coincides with the 30th anniversary of ourSociety and therefore we will be providingextra copies for participants of theSymposium. The appearance of thisAutumn Journal is somewhat unusual as it isin disguise! Around it we have wrapped thegift of a panorama of London by MatthaeusMerian c.1650 to commemorate thisanniversary. There is slightly more to itthan meets the eye as on the verso of thepanorama you will find an Ogilby strip mapwhich starts in London. This is to symbolisethe early days of IMCoS. Next to it, under the numerals for 30, you may discern a worldmap by Pieter van der Aa, published in 1713 for his Nouveau Atlas and again in 1729 forhis Galérie Agréable. The latter map – in polar azimuthal projection - stands for ourdevelopment into a society with members from countries all over the World.Whilst this is, supposedly, good news, there is also some bad news to report. Next year’s

International Symposium, scheduled to take place in Tokyo/Japan, has had to becancelled. Our National Representative there suddenly found himself without assistance,as the Tokyo Map Society has been dissolved. Your Executive Committee is activelyconsidering potential alternatives but it must be admitted that finding an organiser for asymposium in another country at such short notice is next to impossible. The regular lead-time for our symposiums is in the order of two years plus a further period to determinethe feasibility of such an event. This usually precedes the preparation proper and may takearound one year or thereabouts.

In order to make the best of this situation, I would suggest you all register for theLondon Symposium which I know you will enjoy and which should help you to get overthe disappointment of a cancelled Tokyo event.

Our congratulations go to Jonathan Potter, the well known London map dealer, whowas presented with the IMCoS-Helen Wallis Award at the Society’s annual dinner on 4th

June. Jonathan has been a staunch supporter of IMCoS from the beginning. He may seema likely choice but support for IMCoS does not necessarily meet the criteria for this Award(as pointed out by Tony Campbell in his citation). So Jonathan was selected for otherreasons; the books and catalogues he has written, his help and guidance to new collectors,his profound knowledge of his subject and his friendly and proficient dealings with hiscustomers over so many years. This award also stresses that our society recognises mapdealers as an essential and welcome group amongst the other groups of our members madeup of collectors, curators and researchers. It also illustrates the society’s recognition of mapdealers as an essential and welcome group in the infrastructure of map collecting generally.

I can also report that after our Annual General Meeting on Saturday morning 5th June,everybody went on to enjoy the London Map Fair yet again. This was to be expectedwith such an array of reputable dealers gathered in the friendly ambience of the RoyalGeographical Society building in London.

Hans Kok

IMCoS LIST OF OFFICERSPresident: Sarah TyackeAdvisory CouncilRodney Shirley (Past President)Oswald Dreyer-Eimbcke (Past President)Roger Baskes (Past President)W.A.R. Richardson (Adelaide)Montserrat Galera (Barcelona)Bob Karrow (Chicago)Peter Barber (London)Catherine Delano-Smith (London)Hélène Richard (Paris)Günter Schilder (Utrecht)Executive Committee and Appointed OfficersChairman: Hans KokPoelwaai 15, 2162 HA LisseThe NetherlandsTel/Fax: +31 25 2415227email: [email protected] Chairman: Valerie NewbyInternational Representative:Rolph LanglaisKlosekamp 18, D-40489 Dusseldorf, GermanyTel: +49 211 40 37 54 email: [email protected] Secretary: Stephen Williams135 Selsey Road, EdgbastonBirmingham B17 8JP, UKTel: +44 (0)121 429 3813email: [email protected]: Jeremy Edwards26 Rooksmead Road, Sunbury on ThamesMiddx TW16 6PD, UKTel: +44 (0)1932 787390 email: [email protected] Liaison: Yasha Beresinere-mail: [email protected] Representatives Co-ordinator: Robert ClancyPO Box 891, Newcastle 2300, New South Wales, AustraliaTel: +61 (0)249 96277email: [email protected] Co-ordinator: Kit BattenTel: +49 7118 601167email: [email protected] Consultant: Tom HarperTel: +44 (0)7811 582106email: [email protected]: David Webb48d Bath Road, Atworth, Melksham SN12 8JX, UKTel: +44 (0)1225 702 351IMCoS Financial and MembershipAdministration: Sue BootyRogues Roost, Poundsgate, Newton Abbot, Devon TQ13 7PS, UKFax: +44 (0)1364 631 042email: [email protected]


Travel, Atlases, Maps and Natural HistoryAUCTION IN LONDON 4 NOVEMBER 2010 I ENQUIRIES +44 (0)20 7293 5291 I SOTHEBYS.COM

Nicolaes Visscher, Atlas minor, Amsterdam, c.1703, the Wardington copyESTIMATE £20,000 - 30,000


5www.imcos.org

From the Editor’s Desk

by Valerie Newby

Isuppose 30 years old doesn’t seem much tocollectors of maps which are 100-plus yearsold (some even up to 500 years old) but wehope you will all join us in celebrating this

IMCoS birthday nevertheless. We hope youenjoy your panorama of London by MatthaeusMerian (the elder).1 It was published in Frankfurtc.1650 and shows London from the King’s Palaceat Whitehall to the Tower of London and StKatherine’s Church in the East. London Bridgestill has buildings across it and several traitors’heads decorate the bridge’s southern side.Shakespeare’s Globe theatre and the bull baitingring can be seen in Southwark.

The Merian family came from Basel inSwitzerland but also worked in Zurich,Strasbourg and Frankfurt am Main. Severalgenerations of the family were involved in thepublishing business. This panorama comes fromthe collections of Jenny and Ian Harvey and weare most grateful to them for loaning it. Hans andI had quite a few problems sorting out thelogistics of the printing and folding of this wrap-around map but in the end it was anEnglish/Dutch collaboration: printed in Holland,folded in England!

We have a feast of articles for you in thiscelebratory issue. For the first time we arepublishing an article by Kazumasa Yamashita, ourInternational Representative in Japan, who hasput pen to paper in a language he finds difficult,namely English. His subject of Feng Shui mapswhich show the most propitious sites for placingfamily graves, was so obscure to me that I spentsome time with him during our symposium inNorway while he explained the significance ofthese woodcut blocks he had collected. This isprobably a first for publication of suchinformation in English.

What is thought to be the largest atlas in theWorld, the so-called Klencke atlas, which livesnormally in a locked cabinet in the foyer to theBritish Library Map Library, was brought out andexamined in preparation for its display in thecurrent exhibition ‘Magnificent Maps: Power,Propaganda and Art’. Tom Harper, the MapCurator, has taken the opportunity to write anarticle for us about it and has also listed all the

maps (rare) which it contains. This should proveuseful for researchers. Peter Barber, Head ofMaps at the BL, said on television that this wasthe first time he had actually handled the atlas.

Yasha Beresiner is well known to IMCoSmembers and he has contributed an article aboutcartographic and map playing cards. Yasha isprobably the World’s leading expert on thesubject so I am sure you will find it reallyinteresting. In addition, Rodney Shirley, aregular contributor to the Journal, has writtenabout the three impediments to map and chart-making in 1700; the nature and constancy of themagnetic variation, the true shape of the earthand a practical way of measuring longitude. Heexplains how these problems were tackled andeventually overcome.

Finally, if there is anyone who would like totake on the voluntary job of Book ReviewsEditor do get in touch. No expertise needed butcontacts in the map world would definitely be anadvantage.

I look forward to meeting you all at theInternational Symposium. Until then…..

Notes1 See Valerie Scott Ed., Tooley’s Dictionary ofMapmakers Revised Edition K-P p.240

Portrait of ValerieNewby by MarkNicholson.

pp.1-6 Front pages: pp. 01-4 Front 19/8/10 09:23 Page 5

6 IMCoS Journal


Feng Shui Maps

A chance discovery

by Kazumasa Yamashita

For the past seven or eight years, I have beentravelling regularly twice a year to China insearch of old Chinese maps. Recently, Ihappened to purchase several dozen of the

woodblocks used for printing such maps. Lookingcarefully at these, I realized that they are equivalentto the dies for a certain type of diagram that onefinds used as illustrations in Chinese manuals ofgeomancy1. The dealer who had first brought themto me had been visiting Anhui province in search ofantique furniture, so I assume he must have pickedup my woodblocks in the Tunxi quarter ofHuangshan City. Over two years I acquired some50 items before the source dried up. Since theblocks are worked and prepared for printing onboth sides, I now possess a total of roughly 100examples, including both back and front dies.

Even riddled with wormholes and covered inspider webs, not to mention being marked by thegnawing of mice, these blocks constitute a rarediscovery in a single place. Professor Kunio Miuraof Daito Bunka University in Tokyo believes thatthe maps were originally drawn to illustrate a typeof printed album, each recording a zupu, or familygenealogy (with several maps per album). Suchdocuments are sometimes written by hand.However if the Chinese family was large, a printedversion may well have been required. Note that ina few cases, instead of a different map appearing onthe reverse of the block, an ancestor may beportrayed or the family shrine depicted. Theauthor wonders why these maps were all found inthe Tunxi district of Huangshan. Could there havebeen a group of artisans there? It has also beensuggested that these printed genealogies made useof reusable wooden blocks for the text. This wouldexplain why only the map blocks have survived.

That said, it is only a small leap to visualize theexistence of a print shop in or near the city or itsenvirons executing such commissions. In fact, thevast majority of the surviving blocks (which mayhave been retained for possible future resale) seemto be cut by the same hand. All the same, it is easyto detect other hands at work and even to identifyexamples from different periods in my collection.Clearly, even if one were to investigate the genreof Chinese genealogies, any definite identification

with an actual printed work would be a matter ofsome further luck. However, since all of myexamples are map dies, by chance we have a set ofFeng Shui-based maps in the original block form.While a good many individual genealogicalalbums have disappeared without trace, I havenow obtained a range of impressions of these mapsusing the original blocks. It is hoped that furtherexamples, whether of blocks or the mapsthemselves, may emerge, so that one day a unifiedstudy of the genre can be attempted.

The maps from these blocks differ significantlyfrom known Feng Shui maps, usually idealisationsportraying, for example, the birthplace of somequasi-legendary founding figure of the discipline.By contrast, my maps depict real places, namelythe point of origin of a particular family or thelocation of their grave site. Even where somewhatgeneralised, they are not mere mental pictures butdisplay some familiar Feng Shui principles.

How does one set about reading such a map?At first sight, this is simple. Mountains and otherelevated spots are clearly shown, while thepresence of water serves to indicate rivers, canals,or ponds. Also shown are wet rice paddies, flatfields, roads, bridges, grave sites, shrines,dwellings, pavilions, chapels, water wells, and

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Fig. 1 A family shrineSong-zhu-fang. Inaddition to theSongzhutong Hall(or mausoleum)some eight or ninetombs are shown.Towards the East(top), clearly definedlandforms appear,well suited to ashrine complexdedicated to eminentscholars. Note therodent damage attop right hand edgeof the woodblock(which is in twohalves). (Size:262x350mm)

pp.7-14 Feng Shui maps: IMCOS template (main) 16/8/10 14:27 Page 1

Feng Shui maps

8 IMCoS Journal

Fig.2 (above) A village landscape showing a mansion witha central courtyard. Note the confluence of two rivers where

trees have been planted to conceal the mouth of the rivers(shuikou). On the shoulder of the principal mountain peak(zhushan), at top right, further trees have been planted toimprove the natural configuration of the site. Terraced wet

rice paddies occupy the land between the two rivers. Thisblock is comparatively recent and is dated 1908 inked on

the reverse in Chinese date style. (Size: 210x285mm)

Fig.3 (left) On this block we find the dragon’s lair(Longxue). A pair of dragon’s lairs, backed by a supporting

range of mountains, face the peak (Anshan) in theforeground. However, on the left, two Chinese characters

suggest a badly situated point of escape for the dragon,requiring attention on the part of the Feng Shui Master.

(Size: 167x170mm)

Fig.4 (top right) This block shows the Hanglingong familytomb. It may not be from Anhui province, based on the

external evidence and style. Less topographical detail is shownwhile trees have been planted at the left to correct inherent

defects in the natural configuration according to the principlesof Feng Shui. (Size: 123 x 146mm)

Fig.5 (right) This shows the Bidazhang family tomb. It isa clan village plan with a centrally located gravesite.

However, tombs can be seen but there is no indication oftheir association with the clan. Based on provenance and

style is is possible this block belonged to a different familylineage. (Size: 230 x 153mm)


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notable trees. One helpful element is the inclusionof various Chinese characters. Details inperspective are spread out as if a fish-eye cameralens had been used. Such maps are meant asauspicious records despite the fact that they areunmeasured and depend on either memory or theimagination of the delineator. Not being aspecialist in such matters, I cannot offer a moredetailed interpretation. However, I shall try hereto present a schematic outline of the geomanticprinciples that constitute Feng Shui .

Fortunately, we possess Professor Kunio Miura’sexcellent handbook in Japanese Fusui Kohgi(Lectures about Feng Shui). Based on the classicMing dynasty text Dilirenzixuzhi (Compendium ofEssential Geographical Wisdom), he offers afundamental guide to the topic.

The term Feng Shui appears for the first time asa written technical expression, or term of art, inthe Zangshu (Book of Funerals) ascribed to GuoPu (276-324 CE) of the Jin dynasty. The origin ofthis technique dates to a time after 1600 BCE,hence in the Shang dynasty, principally as themeans of situating a dwelling. Following theperiod of Guo Pu’s activity, the practice of FengShui spread throughout China and two distinctschools appeared: Xingfa and Lifa. The first of thesewas mainly preoccupied with relative positioningin the landscape, especially as regards the presenceof mountains and water. The second school dealtprincipally with the human body, climate, andgeography, all in terms of geomagnetic theory.

Although, in fact, running the gamut fromreligion and philosophy to so-called NaturalPhilosophy or, in modern terms “science”, FengShui is best known as a tool for foretelling futureevents or discovery by supernatural means. Theaims were, first of all, to determine the auspiciouslayout of a clan gravesite and shrine (yinzhai), thento draw propitious plans for a family dwelling(yangzhai). A third use of Feng Shui was in village,town, and capital planning.

Feng Shui was also at times referred to as“geography” (dili) but scarcely in today’s terms asempirical science. It was instead an academicconstruct with rigid applications, transmitted as abody of oral knowledge, originally in China andlater in Taiwan, Okinawa, and Korea. Its root isthe notion that all geological and geographicalfeatures are imbued with a life force (qi). This viewof natural features concerned with virtually anylandscape is the main premise of Feng Shui,whether viewed as science or as technology. Everyaspect of Nature expresses qi, distributed withgreater or lesser intensity in accordance withlocality and influencing any individual occupyingsuch a space by imparting prospective fortune ormisfortune.


This same natural energy flows within the humanbody and through the earth itself and is regarded as afield of force. The cardinal directions also impact qidistribution, and in climatic terms qi is diffused by thewinds of the four quarters. The presence of water, onthe other hand, tends to interrupt such flow.Therefore, the term Feng Shui, signified by the twoChinese characters for wind and water, derives fromnotions of flow and blockage. Mountains likewisecount among the most important reservoirs of qi, andintensity of flow is read in the suggestive profiles ofmountain peaks and ranges.

Feng Shui was applied early on to determine thesite of graves, a subject on which my map collectionfocuses. Any propitious gravesite is supported by afree and active flow of qi. Places like this are calledlongxue in Chinese, or dragon’s lair in English. Theirpositioning is part and parcel of the respect owedthroughout the Chinese cultural sphere by childrento their parents and forebears, with the equivalentgoal of ensuring the qi of a flourishing family line. Anauspicious gravesite is energised, literally, in a manneressential to the continuation and bright future of anygiven lineage. My maps depict the optimum locationof grave plots, and their outlying and containingfeatures, as chosen with the help of Feng Shui.

Although there are many schools and varioustechniques that continue to evolve, the divinationskills used in our maps comprise four dili sike, orpaths: 1) longfa, 2) xuefa, 3) xhafa, and 4) shuifa.Each of these “ways” is intricate and detailed in itsworkings, so that it was always essential to requestthe professional aid of a Feng Shui Master, ordiviner, to determine an auspicious site.

The Way of the Dragon (longfa) is a means ofdiscovering the all-important flow (longmai) of qi.The dragon draws vital energy across mountain,river, and plain. The long irregular profile of its pathis believed to trace the lineage of a particular family.This continuous longmai persists to the longxue, ordragon’s lair, at which spot the family tomb isauspiciously set. The Dragon’s Way, laying down theenergy veins of the earth itself, originates in a singledistant principal peak (taizhushan), representing theancestral origin of the family.

Feng Shui maps

10 IMCoS Journal

Fig.6 (top left) The Jinqui couple’s tombs with ridgesemanating from the principal peak (zhushan)

resembling crab claws which indicates the ability ofdescendants to preserve the family fortune.

(Size: 170 x 155mm)

Fig.7 (left) An unidentified grave site showing a principalpeak (zhushan) which auspiciously backs the tomb but the

main dragon’s path (longmai) veers slightly left. Theshaded mounds facing the tomb appear to be artificially

configured as a facing peak (anshan) in order to offset thisfeature. At the lower edge of the blocks, one of the peaks of

the secondary facing ranges (chaoshan) is shaped like thetip of a writing brush which suggests the clan will produce

highly gifted children in the future. (Size: 160x160mm)


11www.imcos.org

The Way of the Lair (xuefa) seeks to identifythe longxue (some three to 15 metres in diameter).With its major concentration of qi, it is aprivileged location faced by a still broader precinctcalled mingtang, or Bright Shrine. Whether convexor concave in form, the exact longxue must bedecided by referring to the subtle geography of theplace before any human mortal remains can beinterred there.

Third is the Way of Sand (shafa), where landscapefeatures, each with its own qi, surrounding thelongxue must be determined in sufficient energyterms to support the presence of the longxue andlongmai. Moreover, the four Taoist lords (sishen) ofthe cardinal directions should stand guard in the formof four distinct peaks, each as symbolized by its ownmythical creature: a red phoenix to the South, ablack snake-tortoise to the North, a blue dragon tothe East, and a white tiger to the West. However,this arrangement, standard as it is throughout China,is not always feasible. Instead, the lay of the land mustsometimes be assessed by alternative reckonings.

The Way of Water (shuifa) presumes a nearbywatercourse (whether a river, canal, lake, ormarshland) with innate capacity to control andmodify the flow of qi. This must be carefullyverified as the presence of water is capable of bothaiding, as well as blocking, vital flow. In particular,the Feng Shui Master will look for an attractivewatercourse, which despite its proximity, will windout of sight of the actual dragon’s lair at a pointreferred to as shuikou (river mouth).

However, all such items (apart from considerationof the cardinal directions and the presence of water)are mere details in the complex set of rules governingthe art of Xingfa-school divination that must achievea balanced correlation among these four principles.The aim is to achieve a working synthesis, often by aform of magnetic divination, involving the use of aspecial compass devised for the purpose. Even if thelay of the landscape appears overtly inauspicious, thisin itself can prove fortuitous once the Feng ShuiMaster takes into account any exceptions in thevicinity of the longxue. Thus, a vast store ofknowledge, sensibility, and experience are required.What may at first appear simple and straightforward in

Fig.8 (top right) The Jiangxigong and Shijiagong couplestombs. Successively joined parallel ridges behind these gravesites suggest continuity with the ancestors. The wing-likeappendages sustain and support the grave locations. On theleft, two large trees have been planted to enhance theauspicious layout of the tombs. (Size: 170x162mm)

Fig.9 (right) A dragon’s lair (longxue) is shown at thecentre of the map with a river flowing behind the principalpeak. To the north the name Wucheng appears, perhapsreferring to the prefectural capital Wu-yuan in AnhuiProvince. This woodblock bears traces of cinnabar ordragon’s blood (i.e. red lead paint). (Size: 170x150mm)


this collection of woodblocks is subtle and difficult forthe layman to grasp.

These maps show for the most part the gravesite ofthe founder of a particular lineage. They emphasizethe suitability of each locality, as it conforms to FengShui principles. It would be of interest to comparethese representations with each actual site, in terms ofthe lay of the land and real distances. Examining thesediagrams, one feels an ancient world view arise anddiffuse before one’s very eyes. But I hope that furtherresearch may one day reveal a more assuredinterpretation. With this in mind, I intend to make theentire collection available soon as a limited edition.

Kazumasa Yamashita welcomes queries and may bereached by email at: [email protected].

AcknowledgementsThe author wishes to thank Professor David B. Stewart(Tokyo Institute of Technology) and Toshiko Stewart fortranslation from the Japanese, as well as Assistant ProfessorTakatsugu Yamamoto (Chubu University), who verykindly aided in establishing the captions. Also, KazutoshiOhbori who assisted with the translation of the Chinese.He would also like to thank Dr. Zhong Chong (AssociateProfessor, Shanghai Normal University) for his help incompleting the research for this article.Note1. Geomancy is the art of divination by means of linesand figures.

Kazu (as he is known to members of IMCoS) livesin Tokyo and has been a loyal member of IMCoS andour representative for Japan since 1963. He is a retiredarchitect and Professor but is now working as a trustee ofThe Japan Folk Craft Museum and also a trustee ofYanagi Industrial Design Institute. He became interestedin old maps when he was given a book of old city planswhile working in Germany. In 1984 he worked for theGreater London Council where he saw many early planswhich accelerated his interest in old maps. He started tocollect plans of Edo after his return to Tokyo in 1966but his interest widened to plans of other cities, provincialmaps, travel maps and all other categories of Japanesemaps. He has a collection of about 15,000 maps andplans. His interest and collecting of Chinese maps startedabout eight years ago.

Feng Shui maps

12 IMCoS Journal

Fig.10 The Baofamily shrine and

residential complex.The naming and

form of thesurrounding

mountains are in themanner of Feng

Shui, with a largenumber of trees and

bridges inserted toimprove the subtle

properties of theexisting landscape.The elaborate mainfamily shrine, built

to accommodatememorial rites for

the deceased, wouldalso have been usedas a study hall for

the Chinese classics.The woodblock is in

two halves.(Size: 250x324mm)


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14 IMCoS Journal


A Fine Hand

Cartographic and map playing cards 1590-1798

by Yasha Beresiner

The concept of decorating a pack ofcards beyond the basic suit signsneeded in order to play with them, isan early phenomenon in playing card

history. We only have to think of the ViscontiSforza family in the middle of the 15th century,to visualize superb design and colouring byartists such as Bonifacio Bembo (fl.1444-47)who deviated from the simple standard Italiansuit signs of the period. In Germany, within thecentury, decorative copper engravings of playingcards were being printed with increasingfrequency. As the standard German suit signs hadnot yet been established, a quaint variety ofthemes for these lent themselves well to suchdesigns and Virgil Solis (fl.1544), the famedNuremberg goldsmith, readily comes to mind.

Once this mould of the dual use of playingcards was established, the number and variety ofthemes over the next centuries becameinnumerable and in this context England comesinto particular prominence. From the middle ofthe 17th century the publication of English non-standard packs is seen as a brilliant commercialconcept. Over the following two centuries ahuge number of themes are represented on theface of the 52-card packs: politics, history,education, music, heraldry, arithmetic,calligraphy, fortune telling and cartography. Anemphasis must be placed on the differencebetween purely cartographic playing cards,namely playing cards that have cartographicinformation on them, as opposed to playingcards depicting actual maps, which are fewer innumber and visually far more interesting.

Les Tables de Geographie by Duval, 1669 The uncut sheet titled Les Tables de GéographieRéduites en un jeu de Cartes [The GeographyTables found in a game of maps] by the RoyalGeographer to Louis XIV, Pierre Duval (1618-1683), is not the earliest pack of cartographicplaying cards. It does, however, illustrate theimportance and accuracy of cartographic decks.It was published as an educational 52 playingcard game in France in 1669. So long as theworld consisted of only four known continents,

publishers could attribute one of the four suitsigns to each one of them. In the Duval uncutsheet the suit of Spades is allocated to thecountries in Africa, each card listing statisticalinformation such as cities, rivers and otherfeatures. Countries of Europe are on the Hearts,Asia on the Diamonds and the Americas on theClubs. Three of the cards of each suit aredecorated with a medallion of an indigenoushead.

The Duval deck is a good example ofcartographic playing cards - as opposed to mapplaying cards. The only maps that appear on thesheet are the four continents on the title at thetop of the uncut sheet. It is this aspect of thisdeck that makes it extraordinary. The maps ofthe four continents are from Duval's atlas LaGéographie Universelle, engraved by RobertCordier especially for the title to these playingcards. The astonishing fact was that the map ofthe Americas, the first of the four continentsdepicted, shows California as an island.

California as an islandUntil the 1620s California was always correctlyshown to be a peninsula but the blatant error ofit being seen as an island then persisted for over

15

Fig. 1 California as anisland exemplified inPieter Van der Aa’sL’Ameriquepublished 1713 inLe NouveauThéâtre duMonde.

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pp.15-26 Playing cards: IMCOS template (main) 16/8/10 14:33 Page 1

a hundred years, despite proof to the contrarythat was published in 1705. In 1625 HenryBriggs produced a map published in Londonreferring to a Spanish chart as his evidence. Thisbecame the source for leading map-makers suchas John Speed, Jan Jansson, Nicolas Sanson, andmany others whose maps of the Americas nowshowed California as an island. From 1655 theseincluded Pierre Duval in the several editions ofhis La Géographie Universelle.

Although the French Jesuit priest, FatherKino, walked from New Mexico to the Pacific

coast and confirmed in a 1705 publication thatCalifornia was part of the North Americanmainland, it still took until 1747 for a formalSpanish Royal decree to finally acknowledge andannounce that California was not an island.

William BowesThe earliest cartographic playing cards on recordare English and show maps of the Britishcounties. Each of the 52 cards illustrate the foursigns of the compass. The idea must have beeninspired by the coincidence that the number ofcounties in England and Wales is exactly thesame as the number of cards in a complete deck.The first of two editions of the cards, both in thePrint Room of the British Museum, are dated1590 and c.1605 respectively. The first of thesebears the imprint ‘W B invent’ on the title card.Initially unidentified, these cards were known asthe ‘W B Counties of England and Wales Pack’until the relatively recent discovery, in 1965, ofa very similar looking deck, clearly designed bythe same artist and attributed to a Gillian Bowesor William Bowes, on the Jack of Clubs.However, so far little is known about Williambeyond his name. A Ralph Bowes is recorded asa playing card maker in 1578 being granted apatent both to import and print playing cards butnothing about William Bowes.1 They areprobably related especially according to SylviaMann and David Kingsley.2

Christopher SaxtonAlthough Christopher Saxton had published

an English county atlas in 1579, several countieswere grouped together for each individual map.Thus a deck of cards by William Bowles elevenyears later, has the distinction of being the veryfirst representation of individual English countymaps in print. The introductory map of England- with the divisions of the counties so prominent- is clearly derived from Saxton's map titled‘Anglia’ published in his Atlas of England andWales in 1579. Similarly much of the extendedtext on the face of the cards has informationmost likely to have come from the maplessedition of Camden’s Britannia, published in1586. It was only in the sixth edition of 1607that county maps appeared for the first time.

There is an orderly and regular pattern to theBowles cards with the four suit signs dedicatedto specific counties. All the Welsh ones in theHeart suit are an example and within each suitthe size of the county is taken into accountprogressively from the Ace onwards.

The second edition of the Bowles’ playing

A Fine Hand

Fig. 2The Queen of

Diamonds fromWilliam Bowes’

memory cards, 1605,showing a map

of Kent.

16 IMCoS Journal


cards has never been published. They are datedto the early reign of James I (1566-1625 -monarch from 1603) because his coats-of-arms,as well as those of Elizabeth I, appear on thecards, thus indicating the end of one and the startof the new reign at the time of publication. Butthe cards are proofs printed on a standard pack ofcards with the suit signs protruding through thedesign - giving them an appearance of beingincomplete in design. The court cards areparticularly interesting as they are the earliestexample we have of an English playing carddesign at the beginning of the 17th century.There is no evidence of any such pack everbeing produced and it may well have been adraft project finally discarded. This possibilitydoes not diminish the interest and inestimablehistoric value of these cards.

Robert MordenRemaining in England we return to the realmsof realistic rarity when we look at two playngcard decks of maps published simultaneously byRobert Morden and William Redmayne in1676. Robert Morden (d.1703) was ageographer, publisher, bookseller and globemaker based at Cornhill in London who remainsbest known for his English county mapspublished in the 1695 and 1722 editions ofCamden’s Britannia. His earliest maps are datedfrom 1673 and in 1676 the first edition of Thefifty-two Counties of England and Wales,geographically described in a pack of Cards waspublished in conjunction with William Berry,Robert Green and George Minikin. The titlecontinues ‘... ready for the playing of our EnglishGames as any of the common cards.’ It may havebeen an optimistic comment as the current rarityof the pack would indicate a lack of popularityand a small print run. Nonetheless, an improvedsecond edition was published in the same year,with greater detail in both the names of townsand cities, as well as symbols and, importantly,the addition of the names of the neighbouringcounties.

Both card players and map enthusiastspurchased the deck which consisted of 54 cards.Each contained a title card with explanatory textand an additional card of the map of England andWales. The remainder have the Spade suitdedicated to maps of the Welsh and west ofEngland counties. The Hearts show the easterncounties, Diamonds the southern ones, andClubs the northern English counties. Each maphas a compass rose and a scale, which have notbeen standardised through the pack.

The cards are divided into three panels. Thetop of each gives the name of the county, theLatin numeral of the card on the right and itsArabic equivalent on the left. The Kings andQueens of each of the four suits depict amedallion of the heads of King Charles II (1660-1685) and his Portuguese Queen, Catherine ofBraganza; the Jacks consist of four unidentifiedportraits. The middle panel contains the map andthe bottom panel is devoted to statisticalinformation about the county: length, breadth,circumference, latitude and distance fromLondon.

Again various mapmakers of the period suchas John Speed (1542-1629) and Richard Blome(1635-1705), would have been the source ofinformation for Morden. However, the moststriking aspect of these playing cards is the fact

17www.imcos.org

Fig. 3 Robert Morden’s1676 nine of Clubsand ten ofDiamonds showingEnglish countymaps. They camefrom The Fifty-two Counties ofEngland andWalesgeographicallydescribed in apack of cards.Staffordshire bycourtesy of GeoffreyKing.


that each individual map incorporates the roadswithin the county for the very first time on anyEnglish map. Robert Morden specifically creditsJohn Ogilby as his source, stating in the title card‘... first ... measured miles by Esqr Ogilby withhis leave...’. This pack was reprinted by HarryMargary in 1975.

John OgilbyJohn Ogilby (1600-1675), an extraordinarycharacter by any standard, was the author of theBritannia published a year earlier and the last ofthe many projects in his diverse lifetime.Britannia was the first of the atlases depicting theroads leading from London to the counties ofEngland and Wales, and, as stated, they appearedon Morden’s playing cards the year before

publication of Ogilby’s monumental work. Thusmap collectors whose interest lies in the onesingle card of their own county keenly seek theMorden cards. It explains the rarity of completepacks and the relatively high price achieved byindividual playing cards of any one county.

The relative importance of the Morden mapcards and the educational value of the deck arereflected in a much later edition. In 1773H.Turpin published a book titled A BriefDescription of England and Wales reproducing theMorden playing card maps with the stencilledsuit-signs removed and the remainder of thecards, with the printed roman numeral,published as in the original edition. Each cardhad detailed text giving the county's history,topography and other relevant information.

William RedmayneThe same year saw the publication of a furtherdeck of English county playing cards by WilliamRedmayne, intended to be in competition withRobert Morden. William Redmayne (fl.1674-d.1719), a map seller, printer and stationer inLondon, died of fever in London’s infamousNewgate prison in 1719, where he wasimprisoned for libel.

Redmayne’s maps on his deck of cards were ata smaller scale and totally impractical as cartographicitems. He registered them at Stationers Hall in 1676as Recreative Pastime by Cardplay; Geographical,Chronological, and Historiographical of England andWales. Several additional publishers were involvedin this work. The maps on the 52 cards are poorquality with the centralised suit mark at timesobliterating a whole section of the map. Thecounties are in a haphazard order, rather than beingdivided regionally, with the county title at the topof each card.

Later editions of the same pack are of interestto collectors because of the varying borderdecoration but the maps and card designremained the same in 1677 and the third andmuch later edition in 1711 published by theindefatigable John Lenthall.

John Lenthall John Lenthall (fl.1709-20) was a Fleet Streetstationer in London who never produced asingle pack of cards of his own. Yet hemonopolised the trade by buying existing platesof all known publishers of cards and reproducingthem, in addition to importing a range ofdecorative cards, which he freely advertised forsale. In 1717, Lenthall reissued the playing cardsoriginally devised by Robert Morden, with very

A Fine Hand

18 IMCoS Journal

Fig. 4Middlesex from H.

Turpin’s A BriefDescription of

England andWales 1773, basedon Ogilby’s maps.


19www.imcos.org

little change to the plates, although in someinstances he re-engraved a whole map. TheLenthall trade mark on these cards is a decorativeborder added to each, and frequently theaddition of new title cards, some advertisingother packs of cards in Lenthall’s stock.Complete packs of his cards, most of which wereunrelated to cartography, are prized itemsamong playing card collectors.

Geographic Cards 1676Another English geographic deck, in whichLenthall was eventually involved, is the rare oneof 1676 identified by the circular medallions ofthe court cards engraved by F. H. van (den)Hove. The medallions show portraits of thenamed Kings and Qeens including Charles II ofEngland, John IV of Portugal, Rhea Silvia(mother of Romulus and Remus), Candace, theEthiopian Queen and Elizabeth I. The cardswere first made by Thomas Poole and sold byHenry Brome and later advertised by JohnLenthall until 1712. The title Geographical Cardswas only introduced with the later editions,when published by Lenthall. A true geographicpack, there is no map in view and the body ofeach card is crammed with statistical informationfor each of the countries in the four continents.The relevant latitude and longitude for eachcountry is given at the base of the card indicatingthe utilitarian, educational intention of Poolewhen he originally produced them.

Winstanley’s Travelling Cards 1675 Lenthall also produced the late edition of the 52-card pack Travelling Cards first published byWinstanley in 1675-6. After his death in 1703Lenthall purchased the rights and advertisedthem in The Post Boy in December 1714renaming them Winstanley Geographical Cards.With the exception of the Aces, dedicated eachto one of the four continents, the upper half ofeach card contains two indigenous figures and anamed city view in the background. Thecountry concerned, its economy and otherdetails are given in the central panel. The courtcards have crowns for the Kings and Queens anda hat for the Jacks, placed above the non-standard suit-sign. A very good facsimile of thispack was printed in a limited edition in SaffronWalden, England in 1986.

Desmarests and Stefano Della Bella 1644During the 17th century, four of the mostattractive decks of cards ever designed were inproduction in France. Drawn by the Florentine

artist and engraver Stefano Della Bella, theywere made by Jean Desmarests (1596-1676) atthe instigation of Cardinal Mazarin for theedification of the young Louis XIV. The titles ofthe four packs are: ‘Jeu des Fables’, ‘Cartes desRois de France’, ‘Jeu des Reynes Renommées’ and‘Jeu de la Géographie’. (The Game of Fables,Kings and Queens of France and GeographicalGame). The geographical pack consists of 52cards with a title card depicting a planisphere.The remainder of the cards have a single femalefigure robed in suitable attire as thepersonification of a country or continent. Thefour suits are dedicated, again, to the fourknown continents. The European figures haveshields displaying coats-of-arms, whilst the titleand text occupy the lower third of the card.

Under a French letters patent of 1644, thesepacks were sold by Henry le Gras, ‘Libraire au 3epilier de la Grande Salle du Palais’ [Bookseller atthe 3rd pillar of the Great Room of the Palace]whose imprint appears on the title card, as doesthat of the publisher Florentin Lambert. In about1670, when Lambert died, Florent Le Comtepurchased the plates of all four games andreplaced le Gras’s name and address with hisown. It was the same Florent Le Comte whopublished the decks in book form in 1698,jointly with Nicolas Le Clerc. The variouschanges to the engravings on the individualcards, more than 50 years after the first edition of1644, are exemplified by the new portrait ofLouis XIV (1638-1715) now with a more up-to-date image, based on his statue recently erectedin the Place des Victoires. Various versions ofthese decks were later published in Holland,Germany, Italy and, not surprisingly, in Englandby John Lenthall c.1723.

Fig. 5The title card with aworld map from Jeu de laGéographiedesigned by JeanDesmarests (1596-1676) and engravedby Stefano DellaBella of Florence.Originally issued in1644 with theimprint of Henry leGros; this last issuein Paris by Nicolasle Clerc 1698. Bycourtesy of GeoffreyKing.


20 IMCoS Journal

Spiel und Lang Karten Seyfried/Hofmann1678 Germany too played its part producing onespectacular 52-card cartographic deck larger thanstandard (125mm x 66mm). The impressive mapprints on each card have the distinctive featureof the stencilled value shown along the top edgeof the card by a row of overlapping suit signs.The Aces and court cards have legends Das As,Der König, Die Dame and Der Knecht (the Ace,the King, the Dame and the Knight) followed bya single suit sign. Each card delineates either avertical or horizontal map of some part of theworld naming cities and giving good generaldetail. The maps were drawn by J. H. Seyfried,engraved by W. Pfann and printed by Johann

Hoffmann in Nuremberg in 1678. The conceptfor the cards and the publishing was by JohannPraetorius. The availability of an accompanyingbook allows for the exact naming and dating ofthose involved in their production.

Covens & Mortier 1710By the 18th century the cartographic range ofcards was dominated by one important family ofmap-makers, the Amsterdam map publishinggroup founded in 1685 by Pieter Mortier(1661-1711). Pieter, or Pierre, Mortier was inpartnership with Marc Huguetan from c.1690onwards. In competition with people like Valck& Schenk, they successfully obtained thepublishing rights for the maps by NicolasSanson and Alexis Hubert Jaillot. The familyprospered, publishing important maps andatlases in the last decades of the 17th and early18th centuries. In 1710 Pieter Mortier acquiredthe map stock of Frederick De Wit and after hisdeath a few years later, his widow Ameliasucceeded him. She continued the business(1666-1719) working in partnership withPieter’s brother David from 1711 until her owndeath in 1719. At this stage the daughter AgathaAmelia (1696-1722) married Johannes Covens.A further family connection is to be found inthe marriage of Cornelis Mortier (1699-1783),son of Pieter, to Johanna Covens. In 1721 thenew publishing company, now named Covens& Mortier, was established and continued inbusiness, maintained by their heirs, until 1866.J. Covens & C. Mortier flourished between1721 and 1774 and it was during this period thatthey produced a dedicated deck of cardsdepicting maps of the countries of the world.These were published from 1721 based on thenames Covens and Mortier. Wally Mach, well-known American collector, analysed this deckof cards and noted that the settlement ofGothenberg, for instance, only lasted from 1643to 1655 when the Dutch took it over. NewHolland did not last much longer as the Englishtook over in 1664 and the Great Lakes regionwas named and mapped in a unique form thatonly lasted from 1656 until 1674. He reachedthe correct conclusion that the original mapsused by Covens & Mortier in their playing carddeck published between 1721 and 1740 werefrom the 1660s and derived from maps byNicolas Sanson and Alexis Joliet. Not surprisingsince Mortier had obtained the rights toreproduce their maps in 1690.

Although Covens and Mortier have beenreferred to as second rate printers and their

A Fine Hand

Fig. 6The King of Clubs

from a pack of cardsby Covens &Mortier 1710


21www.imcos.org

legitimate reprint and republishing activitieshave wrongly been interpreted as pirating others’works, their deck of cards remains one of theinteresting and important cartographic playingcards of the 18th century.

Montieri’s Geography Tarot Cards 1725 Italy too has had some outstanding geographicalcards of the 18th century often published as Tarotcards instead of the standard packs. This meantthat now up to 78 larger than standard size cardscould be used for the geographical data. Thereare some outstanding and colourful examples.

The Tarocco Bolognese, also known asMontieri’s Geography And Heraldry Tarot is in anon-standard single-figure 62-card format. Thepictorial map cards have the suit signs restrictedto a rectangular panel at the top of each card.The body of the card has geographical tables onthe trumps, and heraldic information on thestandard cards. The unusual numerals range from1 to 6 instead of the usual 6 to 10, which isexplained by the text on the Ace of Cups statingthat 2, 3, 4 and 5 replace the numerals 7 to 10.The court cards consist of the standard Kings,Queens, Cavaliers and Jacks. All the cards aredecorated with coats-of-arms totalling 176shields in the whole pack. The design of theunnamed trump cards is standard with variations,for instance, where the Tower is represented bylightning and the Hermit as an old man withwings and an hourglass. The name of the makerLuigi Montieri is spelled out by the individualletters on the upper left of each trump card.These engraved cards were coloured by hand.The deck was produced by Bianchi alla Rosa inBologna in 1725.

As an interesting side note, the Bolognesetarot was the original deck in which the fourPapi, offensive to the Catholic Church, werereplaced by the four identical Moorish figuresthat became the norm for the Bolognese tarotever after.

A Systematical Compendium of Geography1790 There are two more 18th century English playingcard decks that should be mentioned. The first isan anonymous curiosity, even ugly in concept,with almost the whole of the card surface areagiving geographical information in a very smalltype face. Unusually, the text at times begins onone card and continues on to the next. Thevalue of each card is in a panel at the top leftwhere a single large suit sign appears. Theindices K Q J are used as initial letters for

Kingdoms, Quarters and Islands. Each suitdescribes one of the four continents named onthe Aces. An unusual cartographic deck by anystandard.

Emanuel Bowen c.1792The second rare pack is important because of theprominence of the cartographer and the unusualconversion of maps to playing cards. The mapsin question were published in the Atlas Minimusby Emanuel Bowen (fl.1714 d.1767), inconjunction with John Gibson, in 1758. Anunknown engraver later supplemented the 52engravings of the maps of the countries of theworld, with an English playing card in the topright hand corner of each map. Clearly theplaying card was superimposed on the originalplates as the plate-mark number is visible outside

Fig.7The map of Scotlandfrom EmanuelBowen and JohnGibson’s AtlasMinimus published1758 and ‘converted’to the six of Clubs.


the border on the top right of each card. Themap of England, for instance, is identified by thenumber 8. Once again the coincidence of the 52maps, which comprise the Atlas Minimus, musthave inspired an enterprising individual toproduce the maps as a playing card deck. Asecond edition of the Atlas was published in1792. The only known example of this deck wasin Germany at the now defunct DeutschesSpielkarten Museum in Bielefeld.

The reader will appreciate this article coversa very small part of the vast subject ofcartographic playing cards, here limited to a fewpacks of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. I would,however, like to end with a personal note.

London and New York on playing cards 1989The two decks of cards published by InterCol in1989 are, so far as I know, the only town planplaying cards ever produced. The packs havebeen created by cutting into five rows of elevencards a simple street map of central London andManhattan in New York, with places of interestmarked in red, and indexed in an accompanyingbooklet. There are inset maps of the

Underground and Theatreland in the Londondeck. A few of the cards in the New York deckalso have useful information overprinted, forinstance FM and AM radio stations. These werepromoted as playing cards, city map and jigsawpuzzle. A true collectors’ pack.

Notes: 1. The Worshipful Company of Stationers andNewspaper Makers ‘entry book of copies’ also known asthe Stationers’ Company Register for the period1554-1640 2. Map Collectors’ Series No.87 Playing Cards 1972p.30

Works consulted:Yasha Beresiner, British County Maps, ACC Suffolk1983 John Berry, Playing Cards of the World - Catalogue of theCollecion of the WCMP [at] Guildhall Library City ofLondon, Bromley 1995 Philip D. Burden, The Mapping of North America I & II,Raleigh Publications Chicago, IL 1998 R. A. Carroll, Printed Maps of Lincolnshire 1576-1900,Lincoln 1996 Catherine Perry Hargrave, A History of Playing Cards,New York 1930 Peter van der Krogt (Ed.) Catalogues of maps and atlasesby Covens & Mortier (facsimile with introduction),Utrecht 1992Helmut Lehmann-Haupt, Gutenberg and the Master ofthe Playing Cards, Yale University Press 1966 Raymond Lister, Old Maps & Globes, Bell & HymanLondon 1979 Sylvia Mann, Collecting Playing Cards, London 1966 Sylvia Mann and David Kingsley, Playing CardsDepicting maps of the British Isles and of English andWelsh Counties, Map Collectors’ Series (ninthVolume) No 87 Map Collectors' Circle 1972 Dora Beale Polk, The Island of California: A History ofthe Myth, Nebraska University Press 1991, F. M. O’Donoghue, Catalogue of the Collection ofPlaying Cards of Lady Charlotte Schreiber, London 1901Lady Charlotte Schreiber, Playing Cards of VariousAges and Counties Volumes I, II & III British MuseumLondon 1892 R. A. Skelton. County Atlases of the British IslesLondon 1970 John Thorpe. The Playing Cards of the WorshipfulCompany of Makers of Playing Cards InterCol London1991 W. H. Wiltshire. A Descriptive Catalogue of Playing andOther Cards in the British Museum, London 1876

A Fine Hand

Fig.8One of InterCol’s

playing cards from1989, showing a

plan of London

22 IMCoS Journal


23www.imcos.org

Tentative Listing of Cartographic Playing Cards* Treated in body of this articleCartographic = Mostly text only no mapsGame = no suit signs

Notes to the Table: *1. Nicolas de Poilly / J.-B. Mitoire, c.1763; e.g.in O'Donoghue FRA124 – 127; Berry 1995, Nos.86, 87, 542, 543; Cary FRA311 (there are moresets and a reference to a Russian version)*2. J. M. Sedelmair, Augsburg, second half 18th

century, map on pip cards 6s and 7s, e.g. inAugustina catalogue, No. 110, Hoffmann 1995,No. 173

*3 Johann Stridbeck II, Augsburg, DieGeographia, c.1680, map/geographical, inHoffmann 1995, No. 183, O’Donoghue GER51*4 René Janet, Paris, Boston de l’Univers, mapcards (pips), in Hoffmann 1995, No. 158 (withadditional older references)

Date Maker Type SourceEngland 1590 Bowes* Map Cards Mann

1675 Winstanley* Cartographic Berry

1676 Seller Map Cards Mann

1676 Moxon Map Cards Mann

1676 Morden* Map Cards Yasha Beresiner

1676 Redmayne* Map Cards Yasha Beresiner

1676 Van Hove* Cartographic Berry

1790 Anon Cartographic Berry

1792 Bowen* Map Cards Mann

1827 Hodges Map Cards Berry

1986 Winstanley FACSIMILE see 1675

1989 InterCol* Town Plan Yasha Beresiner

France 1644 Desmarest* Cartographic Berry

1669 Duval* Cartographic - Uncut sheet/Title

maps

Ortiz Patiño

1710 Mortier Map Cards Mann/Cary

1763*2

de Poilly/Mitoire Map Cards O'Donoghue

1783 Hegrad Map Game Cards Fournier 68

??*4

Janet Map Cards Hoffmann

1806 Vanckere Game Cards Fournier 140

1830 Nicole Game Cards Fournier 186

Germany 1678 Hoffmann* Map Cards Ortiz Patiño

1680*3

Stridbeck II Map Cards O’Donoghue

1770*2

Sedelmair Map Cards Hoffmann

Italy 1725 Montieri* Cartographic - Bolognese Tarot WCMP

1779 Lamberti Cartographic

1780 Anon Cartographic

1790 Desprotti Map Cards – Tarot Parma BM It 301980 Montieri FACSIMILE by Solleone See 1725

Netherlands 1721 Covens/Mortier* Map Cards Cary

Russia 1763*2 De Poilly/Mitoire Map Cards Berry

Spain (1880) Anon Regional Fournier 391

(1900) Ramirez Regional Fournier 390


24 IMCoS Journal


Worth a Look

The world in a fountain

This spinning globe was made by JosefKusser, a German company whichspecialises in creating water featuresmade of their local stone. The globe, at

a diameter of 265 cms (104.3 ins), is thought to bethe largest floating sphere in the world. Installed infront of the Virginia Science Museum inRichmond, Virginia, USA, the globe is made ofmore than 26 tons of solid granite nestled in asocket so accurately engineered that the sphereliterally floats on a thin film of water pumped atlow pressure from beneath.

Being a globe, the inclination of the visitor is

to wish to turn it, whether to see more of the map,or simply to make the earth spin. It rotates on thesame axis as the Earth, with its north poleorientated towards the pole star. The ease withwhich it can be moved, even by the smallest child,combined with the tactile qualities of the coolpolished granite, makes the globe a popular andmesmerising attraction to all. It is partnered by ascale moon, positioned accurately in relation tothe Earth. It was made by Kusser AichaGranitwerke, Dreiburgenstrasse 5, 94529 Aichavorm Wald, Germany www.kusser.com orwww.kusserUSA.com

25www.imcos.org

The 265 cmrevolving graniteglobe at the VirginiaScience Museum inRichmond, Virginia,USA.


26 IMCoS Journal


27www.imcos.org

Mapping Matters

News from the world of maps

The Benevento Collection Sale at Sotheby’s Report by Jenny HarveyIn early May the collection of Frank Benevento’smaps and atlases came up for sale at Sotheby’s(London). Assembled over two decades,circumstances brought these 71 lots to market earlierthan one might expect for a relatively newly formedcollection. The core of the collection was centredon Italian cartographers, representative of theowner’s roots, but other major cartographers whoone would expect to see in any significant collectionwere also represented. Global interest in this salewas reflected in the bank of 12 telephones whichlined the room and through which just over half thesuccessful bids were made.

Thirty four different cartographers wererepresented, with a number of rare individual items,Coronelli and de Jode together accounting for justunder a quarter of the lots – although the individualcartographer accounting for the highest number ofmaps was Gastaldi, since 60 of his double-page mapsfeatured in the first lot, a Ptolemaic Atlas. This waspublished in Venice in 1548 and started the auction

in style, fetching £7,000 over its estimate with atelephone bid of £22,000.

Although there were eight Coronelli maps onoffer it was his folio ‘Navi, o vascelli, galee, galeazze,galeoni e galotte, bucintoro ....ed alter barchepracticate dagli Europei, Africani, Asiatici, edAmericani........’ which exceeded its estimate to thegreatest degree fetching over double its top estimateat £62,000. In this great volume, published in 1697,67 of the 72 plates are engravings of ships thatportrayed the Venetian Republic’s naval heritage.

The highest price paid for an individual map was£100,000. This honour was shared by twocommission bids. One for the extremely rare firststate of Paolo Forlani’s North America, which wasthe only map of North America published by theLafreri school c.1565, and the second was for thesimilarly rare world map by the same cartographer of1570. Rarity, however, did not necessarily inspire.Amongst other rare individual maps featured wereCornelis de Jode’s map of Africa and his double-hemisphere polar projection world map both ofwhich were published in his Speculum orbis terrarum

Fig.1 One of the shipengravings byCoronelli from hisfolio Navi, ovascelli, galee,galeazze…published in 1697.This item fetcheddouble its topestimate at £62,000in Sotheby’sauction. (Bycourtesy ofSotheby’s)

pp.27-34 Mapping Matters: IMCOS template (main) 23/8/10 10:45 Page 1

28 IMCoS Journal

Mapping Matters

in 1593, and both of which went for just under theirlow estimates at £5,500 and £20,000 respectively.

The first printed map to view the world fromthe Poles, Oronce Fine’s famous double-cordiformwoodcut map (this copy printed by ChristianWechel in Paris in 1531) is significant for a numberof reasons and it went for a mid-estimate price of£28,000. Other well known world maps bycartographers such as Schedel, Münster, Ortelius, P.van den Keere, and others went at or aroundestimated price.

Four maps which fetched significantly overestimate were the Gastaldi map of Africa, 1562,Petrus Plancius’ two-sheet engraved world map of1594 and John Smith’s maps of Virginia c.1625 andNew England, 1614.

Gastaldi’s Africa map was a two-sheet version ofhis eight-sheet Africa map issued by Forlani in 1562,two years before Gastaldi published his own map; itwent for £28,000 (£13,000 over top estimate of£15,000). The Plancius is the first world map ‘withelaborate pictorial borders which established apattern of cartographic decoration that lasted forover a century’ (Shirley), and it went to a telephonebidder at £23,000 - £8,000 over top estimate. Theauction for John Smith’s map of Virginia was equally

competitive, raising £28,000 (£13,000 over its topestimate of £15,000). Based on Smith’s extensiveknowledge of the interior gained while exploringthis region, this map was the ninth of eleven stateswhich, unlike the earlier ones, includes some newnames. Smith’s New England map is ‘thefoundation map of New England, the one whichgave it its name and the first devoted to the region’(Burden) and was produced from surveys made bySmith in 1614. It fetched £14,000 over its topestimate, totalling £34,000, and went also to atelephone bidder.

Finally, mention must be made of the Blaeuatlas, previously owned by Lord Wardington, andfor which Benevento had a bespoke cabinet made inItaly of maple, burr, fruitwood and inlaid marquetry.The eleven volumes of the atlas, bound in 12,together with its cabinet, fetched £240,000 againsta top estimate of £220,000 - a substantial increaseon the £100,000 the atlas made at the Wardingtonsale five years ago.

As one might expect, 13 of the lots did not sell;these mostly the more common maps, reflectingcollector selectivity. However, the consensus is thatthe sale was a success with better than expectedrealisations for the more rare or interesting material.

Fig.2 Paolo Forlani’s

rare map of NorthAmerica c.1565

which sold for£100,000.

(By courtesy ofSotheby’s)


29www.imcos.org

Launch of Sailing for the EastReport by Francis HerbertThe launch of a nautical-themed work – Sailing forthe east: history & catalogue of manuscript charts onvellum of the Dutch East India Company (VOC)1602-1799 – co-authored by Günter Schilder(retired Professor of the History of Cartography atUtrecht University) and Hans Kok (currentIMCoS Chairman), took place in a typical tallAmsterdam canalside building at Herengracht 386on the afternoon of Thursday 24th June. The 1663house, whose architect was Philip Vingboons, isnow the offices of Adams Amsterdam Book &Print Auctions bv. This book launch was at thejoint invitation of Utrecht University’s valuableongoing ‘Research programme Explokart’ and ofthe publishers of several other high qualityExplokart-directed works relating to the history ofcartography – HES & De Graaf. The happyevent’s nucleus of speeches and presentations,which took place in a well-preserved ground-floorroom, was encompassed by generous refreshmentsserved in the quiet back garden.

Mrs Paula van Gestel of Explokart’s Board wasthe ‘Mistress of Ceremonies’ who welcomedattendees at the front door and maintained orderthroughout the afternoon. Peter van der Krogt,the Board’s co-editor, was also present – butrelaxing! After her formal welcome speech Mrsvan Gestel first introduced Hans Kok who spoke,with images, about the realisation of the project:the second speaker was Günter Schilder, who

took us on a visual journey to the East. PublisherHES & De Graaf’s director, S.S. Hesselink, wasunable to be present but his youngest son,Corstiaan, read his prepared congratulatory text.The special guest of honour was Mrs M.I.A. vanLoon-Labouchere LL.B (widow of the last male

Paula van Gestelgiving her welcomespeech at the booklaunch. (Photo by René vander Krogt)

Special guest ofhonour, Mrs M.L.A. vanLoon-Labouchere,(widow of the lastdescendant of two ofVOC [Dutch EastIndia Company]’sfounders), is picturedbetween co-authorsGünter Schilder andHans Kok. (Photo by René vander Krogt)


30 IMCoS Journal

descendant of one of VOC’s founders, [Fred] VanLoon).1 Accepting her copy of the 3.87 kg(c.8.5lb) book, she announced that she would haveto carry it home through Amsterdam on her bike.

Sailing for the east has 707 pages, amongstwhich the 64 colour illustrations of individuallyvariant compass roses found on VOC’s manuscriptcharts is an eye-opener, and a CD-ROM,containing 22 appendices, is in a pocket attachedto the inside back cover. The dust-jacket design,by the way, is not repeated on the hard covers –so take care of it!

Note:1. Willem Janszoon van Loon was one of thefounders, in 1602, of the VOC Chamber inRotterdam; his son, Hans, was a member of theAmsterdam Chamber from 1628 – thus supplyingthe more direct connection with the occasion.

London Map Fair a SuccessReport by Tim BryarsAs always, the two-day London Map Fair in Junedrew crowds of enthusiasts from the UK, Europeand beyond. Over the last three years the RoyalGeographical Society has proved itself the idealvenue in every respect: whether one is browsingthrough the vast array of maps of all countries,periods and prices, inside; or relaxing outside onthe sunny terrace between (or during) deals. Thefree lecture on Mercator by explorer, writer andbroadcaster, Nick Crane, proved to be a big drawas was the historic tour of the RGS building led bytheir House Manager Denise Prior.

The fair was once again fully booked andtakings for the 35 exhibitors increased by morethan a third on last year. Total sales of close tothree quarters of a million pounds were the bestto date. Even though visitor numbers wereslightly down, the customers who came spentmore on average than ever before. Business wasdivided almost equally between Saturday andSunday; the trade did most of its work onSaturday and the bulk of sales on Sunday were tothe general public. Since moving to the RGS thepublic have accounted for a third of sales but thisyear a robust 40% of sales were to privatecollectors, including many first time buyers - agreat improvement on our previous years atOlympia. Against all expectations 2010 mightturn out to be the year to beat!

Looking for a large globe?Two years ago, exasperated by not being able tofind a suitable present for his father’s birthday,Peter Bellerby decided to make globes. Havingsearched high and low, it seemed the only

options were modern globes with prime orcomputer generated sepia colouring, expensivefacsimiles, or wonderful antique globes. None ofthe above gave any comfort as to theirworkmanship and many antique globes requiredexpensive restorative work.

Initially the aim was just to assess the viabilityof the project. It quickly came to a point whereexpensive pattern work required a decision to betaken to go ahead. Two years later Bellerby globeshave begun selling worldwide. Each globe is madealmost entirely by hand to the point that Bellerbymix their own pigments and cut all the goresmeticulously by hand. Each map is painted withnumerous layers of colour over several days givinga rich patina. The timber for the table tops isreclaimed oak and the brasswork is heavily agedbefore being hand polished.

The map gores themselves are scanned with aresolution of 2,800 dpi. Each one is printedindividually and takes more than three hours toprint. In a recent commission the company, whichis based in Stoke Newington, London, were ableto add detail to a map for a family whose greatgrandfather mapped a South American country.The mountain range he named after the family isnow on their globe. Prices start at £890 for a 50-cm diameter globe. For further information go towww.bellerbyandco.com

Mapping Matters


31www.imcos.org

Maps for Lord of the Rings redrawnMaps accompanying The Lord of the Rings weredrawn by Christopher Tolkien for the originaledition of the book published in 1954-5. Theyconsisted of a general map of the western regionsof Middle-earth and a more detailed map ofRohan, Gondor, and Mordor; printed in red andblack on large folded sheets pasted in at the end ofeach of the three books. The Fellowship of the Ringand The Two Towers carried the general map,while The Return of the King carried the other. Inaddition, there was a map of the Shire in red andblack preceding Book I of The Fellowship of theRing. Christopher Tolkien redrew the generalmap expressly for inclusion in Unfinished Tales(1980), but subsequently this replaced the originalform in editions of The Lord of the Rings.

With paperback editions the arrangement wasintroduced whereby the general map was dividedinto four sections, in black only, fitting the size ofthe pages, while the whole map in greatly reducedform was also printed as a guide to the sections.The map of Rohan, Gondor and Mordor wasreduced to fit two facing pages.

The original maps, however, were not drawnand lettered in such a way as to make suchreduction satisfactory. Stephen Raw has thereforeredrawn them all, closely following the originalsbut greatly increasing their clarity. As a guide tothe four sections of the general map he has drawna new outline map that provides all necessaryindications in a simplified form

Book launch in LondonKirsten Seaver, an independent historian andresearcher, who is well known for her study of theVinland map and her research into the Norse, ispictured at the launch of her latest book, The LastVikings. The epic story of the great Norse voyagers. It ispublished by I.B. Tauris.

The launch was held at the University ofLondon recently and Kirsten Seaver shared hercurrent research with the people who attended.She explained that late in the 10th century theNorse Vikings embarked on a voyage of noreturn. Leaving Iceland first for Greenland, fromthere they sailed onwards to North Americasetting foot on its shores 500 years beforeColumbus. But by about 1500 their settlementswere abandoned and the Norse Greenlanders andtheir explorations of the New World receded intothe realms of myth. The book is an investigationinto one of the most elusive mysteries of the farNorth brought to life by the author. NB. This book will be reviewed in a future issueof the Journal.

The Hidden PlaceA ‘site specific’ wall painting is currently ondisplay at the private art gallery, Ingleby Gallery,Edinburgh. This is an alternative map ofScotland. Place names tell of old cultures, ofhistory, geography, industry, religion and myth.Scottish place names have their origin in severallanguages: Gaelic, Pictish, Norse, English,French, Latin and Scots. In The Hidden Place byThomas A. Clark over 100 place names arereplaced by phrases revealing the originalmeaning of these names. Each place becomes apiece of condensed folk poetry revealing theriches of the past with a quiet lyricism; bay of thebent grass, place of pebbles, slope of brightness.The Hidden Place is one long poem about the landand its people.

Unknown map variant foundAn unknown variant of Francesco Villamena’s 1602map of Valletta with an inset of the Maltese Islandshas been discovered by Joseph Schiro, Secretary ofthe Malta Map Society, whilst designing a logo forthe recently-formed society. The logo, in a baroquecartouche, includes the Villamena inset of the islandgroup and a compass rose. It was whilst studyingcopies of the Villamena map that Joseph Schironoticed that Villamena’s monogram appears onsome copies of his map but not on others.Therefore, there are two distinct states. This facthad escaped the attention of experts and authors ofreference books.

Kirsten Seaver withher new book TheLast Vikings.


Visitors andexhibitors at theParis Map Fair

2009

32 IMCoS Journal

BCS Map Curator’s GroupMap curators, map librarians, archivists and allthose charged with the care of maps are invited toattend the 2010 workshop of the Map Curators’Group of the British Cartographic Society. Thiswill be held at Cambridge University Library inCambridge, England from 8th-10th September2010. This year’s theme is ‘Beyond the nat line:more than just geography’ and they will belooking at what the marginalia tells us, how earlymass-produced paper maps were printed, and howdigital initiatives are giving map users morepossibilities than ever before. For full details go to:http://www.cartography.org.uk/downloads/MCG/MCG Sept2010 or contact Anne Taylor on [email protected]

EXHIBITIONS AND MAP FAIRSNew exhibit at PrincetonUntil 2nd January, 2011: ‘Strait Through: FromMagellan to Cook and the Pacific’ in FirestoneLibrary of Princeton University Library,Princeton, New Jersey, USA. Documents thestory and the drama of the unfolding explorationof the Pacific Ocean that followed the discoveryof the Strait of Magellan. In rare historic maps andthe original printed narratives of the mainEuropean explorers, the exhibition traces 250years (1520s-1770s) of both national and personalmaritime achievements, as the map of the Pacificslowly developed into its present shape. Amongstthe maps on display will be the first printed mapto name the Pacific Ocean (1540), the first printedmap devoted to the Pacific Ocean (1589), and thefirst printed chart of the whole Pacific Ocean(1650). The curator is John Delaney.h t t p : / / l i b w e b 5 . p r i n c e t o n . e d u / v i s u a lmaterials/maps/websites/pacific/entrance.html

Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Artat The British Library, London will be open until19th September.

9th Paris Map Fair Saturday, 6th November, 2010. To be held at theHotel Ambassador, 16 Bd Haussmann, 75009 Paris11.00-18.00pm. 30 international dealers will beoffering early maps, atlases, views and globes. E-mail:[email protected] or tel. +33 1 44248580

Five new participants will be exhibiting atthe fair. They will include H&S publishers fromThe Netherlands who will have their newreference books on display including therecently published facsimile of the Van der HemAtlas with each page printed in six colours andhighlighted in gold. Also Forum Rare Books.Amongst the new map dealers will be LibreriaPerrini from Italy and Stephan Haas fromGermany. A full list of dealers can be seen atwww.map-fair.com

At a time when more and more dealers areclosing their shops and opening web sites mapfairs are becoming an important place forcollectors to handle and see the maps. 35 dealerswill be present in Paris coming from France,England, Belgium, The Netherlands, Italy, Spain,Greece, and the USA.

This fair is the only one to be held inconjunction with an auction of maps and atlaseswhich will take place in the rooms of Drouot. Goto www.loeb-larocque.com. In addition there willbe a special exhibition of Russian maps to celebratethe special relations between France and Russiawhich will include the Atlas Russicus. On Fridayevening, prior to the fair, a dinner will be held in atraditional Parisian restaurant.

LECTURES AND WORKSHOPSWarburg LecturesThese will continue at the Warburg Institute,University of London, Woburn Square, LondonWC1H OAB at 5pm. Admission is free. Meetings arefollowed by refreshments. [email protected]

4th November, 2010: Cartographic Race Gamesin Europe: Entertainment, Education – orInfluence? Dr Adrian Seville

2nd December, 2010: The Compost of Ptolemyand the Gosson Map (1600/1623?): EnglishGeographic thought and the Early Modern PrintAlmanac. Professor Meg Roland (MarylhurstUniversity, Oregon)

NB. A full list of lectures and exhibitions aroundthe world are listed at John Docktor’s website,http://www. earthlink.net/~docktor/index.htm

Mapping Matters


33www.imcos.org

PARIS Map-Fair& travel books

Saturday 6 November from 11.00 - 18.00

www.map-fair.com

35 International map dealers

Hotel Ambassador 16 bd Haussman - 75013 PARIS

FranceTel +33 1 4424 8580

As we celebrate our 30th anniversary in 2010, why not encouragefriends and colleagues to join our Society?

They will be part of a happy bunch of people who both love to collect and study early maps. Every year we hold anInternational Symposium and other events including our Collectors’ Evening when members can bring along their maps fordiscussion or identification. We also organise an annual dinner with a lecture, and visits to map exhibitions.

Joining IMCoSMembership prices for 2011 are:- annual £45 or three years £120

Junior members pay 50% of the full subscription (a junior member must be under 25 and/or in full time education).NB. Because of the fluctuation in exchange rates between the dollar and the pound in combination with excessive bank charges for non-UK cheques,we will no longer be able to accept dollar cheques. Would members in the USA please pay by credit card.

To apply for membership contact the financial and membership administrator, Sue Booty [email protected] or write to her at Rogues Roost, Poundsgate, Newton Abbot, Devon TQ13 7PS,

or check with our website www.imcos.org

NB. Anyone wishing to join the Society in 2010 will pay the rate of £40.


34 IMCoS Journal


An Extraordinary Atlas

The Klencke Atlas at the British Library

by Tom Harper

The British Library’s exhibition MagnificentMaps: Power, Propaganda and Art (April –September 2010) includes some of theworld’s greatest cartographic treasures - a

true ‘banquet of maps’1. Of these the Klencke atlas of1660 is undoubtedly one of the best known. Withappearances in Radio Times magazine, The Guardiannewspaper, the Guinness Book of Records and onBBC4’s The Beauty of Maps television documentary,2010 has been a busy year for the largest atlas in theworld. Clearly its size, scale and concept impressestoday, just as it impressed the diarist John Evelyn in1660. He saw it in the King’s cabinet, and describedit as ‘a vast book of mapps in a volume of neare fouryards large’.2 Yet despite the attention the atlas hasreceived, scholarly attention has focused mostly uponindividual maps.3 The opportunity to provide aconcise description of its history and contents istherefore most welcome.4

The atlas is named after Johannes Klencke, theman who presented it to Charles II on his restorationto the English throne in 1660. Klencke was a doctorof philosophy and head of a consortium of Dutchsugar merchants who wished to impress the king andgain favourable trade agreements with Britain. Andwhat better gift to give a king than a giant atlas, itsbinding bearing tooled symbols of the nations theking claimed as his dominions: England, Scotland,Ireland, and France. Klencke was made a knight thatsame year, and the atlas was placed in Charles II’scabinet amongst his most prized possessions. It was tostay in royal hands for over 150 years.

If the atlas bears the name of its presenter, itsconception bears the mark of another, Count JohanMaurits of Nassau-Siegen (1604-1679), one of themost enlightened patrons of art and science inBaroque Europe.5 Maurits had influence in the courtsof Europe and was responsible for presenting asimilarly vast (but somewhat smaller) atlas – the GreatElector’s Atlas - now in Berlin, to the Elector ofBrandenburg in 1664.6 Another, the Rostock atlas ofthe same year, is almost certain to have had a similarprovenance.7 During his time as Governor-General ofthe Dutch West India Company in Brazil (1636-1644), Maurits patronised a wealth of artistic andscientific endeavour. The resultant map of Brazil byGeorg Marcgraf, published in 1647 by Joan Blaeu,8provided a concise vision of the Dutch empire

abroad, but also, significantly, of the source of thesugar which accounted for up to 70% of Europe’sconsumption.9 Its inclusion in the Klencke atlas issignificant for the purpose of the gift, and illustrativeof the guiding influence of Maurits.

The Klencke is a composite atlas containing 41copperplate wall maps constituting the greatestexamples of Dutch cartography at the mid point ofthe 17th century. All are extraordinarily rare, havingbenefited from the luxury of protective boards notusually extended to wall maps. Their ordering followsthe pattern of published atlases: the two largehemispheres published by Joan Blaeu in 1648,without the decorative surrounds, are followed by thesame mapmaker’s 1659 wall maps of Europe, Asia,Africa, Southern Asia, North America and SouthAmerica. Each of these is accompanied by letterpresstext in Dutch, Latin and French bearing the imprintsof Henricus Hondius.

35

Fig. 1 Tom Harper isCurator of Maps atthe British Library,London. He workedpreviously for mapdealer, JonathanPotter. He and hispartner have justhad a new baby whohas been namedBernadette. He ispictured here withthe Klencke atlaswhich is taller thanhim. By courtesy ofthe British Library.

www.imcos.org

pp.35-42 Klencke: IMCOS template (main) 17/8/10 08:01 Page 1

The regional maps reflect in part Charles’s (andBritain’s) spheres of interest. There are two maps ofBritain, the unique surviving example of HugoAllard’s map of the British Isles and CornelisDanckerts’s Regni Angliae Tabulam of 1644. Theformer’s damaged state suggests that it was the mostheavily used map in the atlas. Significant coverage isgiven to the Netherlands, where the majority of themaps were made, and where Charles had spentmuch of his nine years of exile. Eight maps coverparts of the Low Countries, including the vast 40-sheet map of 1647 by Jacob Colom which is so largethat it has been placed over two consecutive pages.

Other European maps include Blaeu’s map ofItaly of 1614-17 and the map of Ukraine publishedby William Hondius in 1613, but the maps are notexclusively the work of Dutch publishers. A map ofancient France of 1627 by Nicolas Sanson is joinedby maps from the French cartographers ChristopheTassin and Jean Jubrien, in addition to those by theDutchmen Nicolas Visscher, Jacob Colom, and

Petrus Bertius. Maps of non-European parts of theworld are fewer in number: the Marcgraf map ofBrazil, previously mentioned, Blaeu’s maps of China(1658) and the Holy land (c.1655), and HugoAllard’s map of the East Indies. These are followedby maps of classicised Europe and Greece.

In 1828 the Klencke atlas passed to the BritishMuseum as part of the geographical collections ofGeorge III. It has undergone considerablerestoration on a number of separate occasions. Themaps have all been trimmed close to their printedareas and laid on 19th century paper which hasremoved the possibility of studying their versos. Theatlas was completely rebound around 1961 in theBritish Museum bindery, but its original tooledboards were thankfully retained.10 With the move ofthe British Library to its St. Pancras location in 1998,the atlas reached its current home, and is onpermanent display (closed) in the lobby of the MapsReading Room. It travelled on loan to Milan in2001 for the Segni e Sogni della Terra exhibition

The Klencke Atlas

Fig.2The double-page

map of theSeventeen Provincesby Joan Blaeu dated

1658. Theinspiration behindthis map seems to

have been JohanMaurits, Duke of

Nassau-Siegen whocommissioned several

of the maps in theatlas. Photo bycourtesy of the

British Library.

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37www.imcos.org

where, as currently in Magnificent Maps, it wasdisplayed open.

The atlas is important both in itself, and for itsconstituent parts. As an object, its scale andconception followed Renaissance ideas relating to thesymbolic power of a book which contained the entireknowledge of the World.11 It would have providedCharles II with intellectual authority which enforcesits intimidating presence even today. However, theatlas has long posed practical problems for researchersas it contains maps which are of particular importanceto the history of cartography but which, due to thesize and fragility of the atlas, have been difficult toaccess. The digitisation of the contents of the atlas aspart of preparations for Magnificent Maps provides anopportunity for a less physically challenging and morein-depth study of its contents.

N.B. The Klencke Atlas is currently on display in theexhibition Magnificent Maps: Power, Propoganda and Art atthe British Library, Euston Road, London, which willremain open until 19th September 2010. Entry to theexhibition is free.

Contents of the Klencke Atlas (British Library Maps K.A.R).[Manuscript title inscription] Soli Britannico Reduci CaroloSecundo regium augustissimo hoc Orbis Terrae compendiumhumill. Off. I. Klencke1. Eastern Hemisphere[Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula…] [Amsterdam: Joan Blaeu, 1648]Copperplate engraving on 12 sheets, 152 x 152 cm.State 1 (Shirley no.371).2. Western Hemisphere[Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula…] [Amsterdam: Joan Blaeu, 1648]Copperplate engraving on 12 sheets, 152 x 152 cm.State 1 (Shirley no.371).3. Europe Europae Nova DescriptioAmstelaedami Ioannes Blaeu execudit [1659].Copperplate engraving on 6 sheets, 127 x 102 cm.4. AsiaAsiae Descriptio NovissimaAmstelaedami Ioannis Blaeu execudit [1659]Copperplate engraving on 6 sheets, 118 x 155 cm.

Fig. 3 The Klencke atlas,photographed in theBritish Museum inthe early 1930s. Thegentleman to the leftis Frederick Crocker,who was employedas houseman at theBritish Museumuntil 1933. Themap displayed isBlaeu’s map ofGermany (no.19).


5. Southern AsiaArchipelagus Orientalis Sive AsiaticusAmstelaedami, apud Ioannem Blaeu, 1659.Copperplate engraving on 6 sheets, 118 x 156 cm.6. AfricaNovissima Africae DescriptioAmstelaedami, apud I. Blaeu, 1659.Copperplate engraving on 6 sheets, 120 x 156 cm.7. North AmericaAmerica SeptentrionalisAmstelaedami. Ioannis Blaeu execudebat [1659]Copperplate engraving on 6 sheets, 118 x 155 cm.8. South AmericaAmerica MeridionalisAmstelaedami, apud Ioannem Blaeu 1659.Copperplate engraving on 6 sheets, 119 x 156 cm.9. Great BritainNova Tabula Angliae Scotia et Hibernia [woodcut title]Nieuwe en perfecte caarte van Engeland Schotland en Yrland a1657t’Amsterdam by Huych Allardt unde Calverstraat WeeltCaart, [1657].Copperplate engraving on 6 sheets, 107 x 125 cm.(Shirley II, p.24, Allard 1).10. England and WalesRegni Angliae TabulamAre to be sold by Cornelis Danckertz at Amsterdam 1644.Copperplate engraving on 12 sheets, 137 x 170 cm.(Shirley I, no.536.)11. Spain and PortugalNova et Accurata Regnorum Hispaniae Descriptio[Amsterdam] Execubat Iohannes Blaeu [1659]Copperplate engraving on 6 sheets, 127 x 109 cm.12. Ancient FranceGailiae Antiqua Descriptio Geographica Autore Nicolao SansonAbbavillaeo Anno 1627a Paris chez Melchior Tavernier graveur[Paris: Nicolas Sanson, 1627]Copperplate engraving on 6 sheets, 113 x 108 cm.13. FranceFlorentissimi Galliae Regni Novissima Descriptio[Amsterdam: Joan Blaeu, c.1659]Copperplate engraving on 6 sheets, 128 x 111 cm.14. LorraineCarte des Duchez de Lorraine et Bar[Paris: Christophe Nicolas Tassin ?, c.1640]Copperplate engraving on 4 sheets, 103 x 72 cm.15. PicardyCarte de Picardie[Paris: Christophe Nicolas Tassin ?, c.1640]Copperplate engraving on 4 sheets, 103 x 73 cm.16. North Eastern France and Belgium[6 maps joined] Hainault, Cambresis et Chastellenie deDonay… / Vermandois Tierasche… / Carte de France Valoiset Tardenois / Boulonnois Popntiel Artois / Duche d’Aumolied’Amiens / Carte de Vexin Beauvois.[Paris: Christophe Nicolas Tassin, 1634]6 copperplate engravings, 100 x 105 cm joined.

(From Cartes Générales de Toutes les Provinces de France,1634. Pastoureau, TASSIN II, p. 440).17. Carte du Pais et Duche de Niver Noys[Paris] dessigne par Jean Jubrien a Charlerois, 1621.Copperplate engraving, 90 x 66 cm.18. ItalyNova Descrittione d’Italia di Gioann. Antonio Magino.Amstelodami ex Officina Guijelmi Jansonij [WillemJanszoon Blaeu, 1614-17].Copperplate engraving on 6 sheets, 138 x 194 cm. (MCN vol.v, p.341)19. GermanyNova et Accurata Totius Germaniae Tabula olim a RumoldoMercatore edita, nunc denuo multis in locis emendate et aucta.Anno MCLIXAmstelredami apud Ioannem Blaeu [1659]Copperplate engraving on 6 plates, 97 x 122 cm.(MCN vol.v, p. 280)20. LithuaniaMagni Ducatus Lithuaniae Caeterarumoue Regio num illiAdiacentium Exacta DescriptioAmsterodami execudabit Guilhelmus Janssonius sub signosolarij deaurati Anno 1613[Amsterdam: Hessel Gerritsz / Joan Blaeu, Amsterdam,1613]Copperplate engraving on 4 sheets, 106 x 76 cm.21. Sweden, Denmark and NorwayRegnorum Sveciae Daniae et Norvegiae Descriptio AuctoreAndrea Bureo Regni Svecie SecretarioAmstelaedami Ioannis Blaeu exedebut, [c.1659].Copperplate engraving on 6 sheets, 126 x 110 cm. 22. Seventeen Provinces of the NetherlandsNieuwe ende Waarachtighe Beschrijringhe der ZeventienNederlanden… anno [1658] Amstelaedami ex Typographijo Ioannis Blaeu [1658]Copperplate engraving on 12 sheets, 163 x 135 cm.(MCN vol.I, pp. 122-4).23. FlandersComitatus Flandriae Nova Descriptio [Amsterdam] per Nicolaum Ioannis Visscher 1656.Copperplate engraving on 6 sheets, 162 x 141 cm.24. BrabantDucatus Brabantiae Nova Delineatio [Amsterdam] per Nicolaum I. Visscherum. Anno 1656.Copperplate engraving on 6 sheets, 162 x 141 cm.25. BelgiumSerenis Potentis Ordinibus Belgicae Liberae Foederatae PatriaePatribustot Amsterdam, by Cornelis Danckerts. Inde Calverstraetunde Danchaerbeyt. Anno 1651.Copperplate engraving on 9 sheets, 161 x 130 cm.26. ZeelandZelandiae Comitatus Novissima Tabula Delineata[Amsterdam] per Nicolaum I. Visscherum. Anno 1656.Copperplate engraving on 9 sheets, 163 x 142 cm.27. Holland and WestfrisiaNovia et Accuratitabula, A Hollandiae et Westfrisiae [woodcuttitle]

The Klencke Atlas

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39www.imcos.org

Illustribus ac Praepontentibus Hollandiae Westfrisiaeq,Ordinibus Patriae Patribus DCQ Nicolaus Piscator[Text imprint: l’Amsterdam, by Jacob Aentz Colom,Boeck-verkooperop t’water 1640]Amsterdam, Jacob Colom, 1656.Copperplate engraving on 20 sheets, 169 X 107 cm.(MCN vol.v, pp. 315-9)28–29. Holland’T Graefschap Holland Nieulyx Uytghegheren [Amsterdam] door Iacob A. Colom. Anno 1647Copperplate engraving on 40 sheets, 162 x 302 cm.30. Mouth of the Rhine[Hoogheemraadschap Rijnland]by Jan Janszoon Dou / Steven van Broeckhuysen.Amsterdam: Cornelis Danckerts, 1647 Copperplate engraving on 12 sheets, 168 x 174 cm.31. ClevesJuliacensis, Cliviae, Bergensis Ducatum, Comitatum Marchiae,et Ravenspergae, Dominiique Ravensteimi, Descriptio nova[title in text]Amstelodami sumptibus Henricii Hondii Anno [1636]Copperplate engraving on 6 sheets, 131 x 73 cm.32. UkraineDelineatio Specialis et Accurata Ukrainiae cum suis Palatinatibusac Districtib, Provincysq…Amsterdam: William le Vasseur de Beauplan / WilliamHondius, Amsterdam, 1650.Copperplate engraving on 8 sheets, 216 x 91 cm.33. Rhine and DanubeRhenus Flavorium Europae Celeberrimus…/ Danubus FluviusEuropae Maximus…Amsterdam: Willem Blaeu, [1635-]Copperplate engravings on 2 sheets, each 41 x 96 cm.34. GeldresNouvelle Description de Duche de Gueldres…a Amsterdam chez Cornelis Danckerts graveur descaertes [c.1656].Copperplate engraving on 4 sheets, 35. TransilsaniaTransilsalania provincial: vulgo Over Yssel[Amsterdam] Auct: N. Ten. Have. Sch. Zwol. Correct [1652].Copperplate engraving on 4 sheets,36. East IndiesIndiae quae Orientalis Dicitur. Et Insulae Adiacentest’Amsterdam. Gedruckt by Huych Allardt. IndeKalverstraat inde Werelt-Kaart [1652].Copperplate engraving on 9 sheets, 128 x 157 cm.37. ChinaNova et Accuratissima Sinarum Imperii TabulaAmsterdam: Joan Blaeu, [1658].Copperplate engraving on 6 sheets, 100 x 125 cm.38. BrazilBrasilia qua Parte Paret BelgisAmsterdam: Georg Marcgraf, Caspar van Baerle, JoanBlaeu, 1647.Copperplate engraving on 9 sheets, 101 x 161 cm.39. Holy LandTerrae Sanctae, seu Terrae Promissionis, Novissima Descriptio

[woodcut title]Amsterdam: Joan Blaeu, c. 1655. Copperplate engraving on 8 sheets, 87 x 178 cm.40. Ancient EuropeImperii Caroli Magni et Vicinorum Regionum Descriptio[Amsterdam] ab auctore Petro Bertio ejusdemCosmographe [c.1630].Copperplate engraving on 4 sheets, 99 x 65 cm.41. Ancient GreeceGraecia Antiqua[Amsterdam: J. Laurenberg, c.1660]5 copperplate engravings, 89 x 119 cm

Notes1. Helen Wallis, ‘A Banquet of Maps’ in The Map Collector28 (1984), pp. 2-10. 2. Guy de la Bédoyère (ed.), The Diary of John Evelyn(London, 1994), p.127.3. A great deal of research has been conducted onindividual maps, particularly by Günter Schilder inMonumenta Cartographia Neerlandica vols 1-5. See alsoCornelis Koeman, Günter Schilder, Marco van Egmondand Peter van der Krogt, ‘Commercial Cartography andMap Production in the Low Countries, 1500-ca.1672’ inDavid Woodward (ed.), The History of Cartography VolumeThree: cartography in the European Renaissance part two(Chicago and London, 2007), Appendix 44.3 (p. 1377).4. An unpublished listing of the atlas maps was producedby Bert van t’Hoff in 1957. Provisional description of the mapsin the Klencke atlas in the British Museum. Original typescriptat BL Maps C.21.c.17. Professor Schilder’s paper on theKlencke Atlas, given in Berne in 1996, has been publishedas ‘Der "Riesen"-Atlas in London. Ein Spiegel derniederländischen Wandkartenproduktion um 1660’ in 8.Kartographiehistorisches Colloquium Bern. 3.-5.Oktober 1996(Murten, 2000), pp. 55-74.5. Peter Barber and Tom Harper, Magnificent Maps: power,propaganda and art (London, 2010), p. 92.6. Klemp’s in-depth study of the Great Elector’s Atlas isparticularly relevant, since many of the maps also appearin the Klencke Atlas. Egon Klemp, Kommentar zum atlasdes Grosen Kurfursten / Commentary on the atlas of the GreatElector (Stuttgart, 1971).7. Ibid8. P.J.P. Whitehead, ‘The Marcgraf Map of Brazil’ in TheMap Collector 40 (1982), pp. 17-20; P.J.P. Whitehead andMartin Boeseman, A Portrait of Dutch 17th Century Brazil:animals, plants and people by the artists of Johan Maurits ofNassau (Amsterdam/Oxford/New York, 1989); Barberand Harper, pp. 42-3.9. Helen Wallis in The Map Collector 28 (1984), p. 2. 10. Wallace Pointer, ‘Rebinding the Klencke atlas’ inBritish Museum Quarterly volume xxiv. Number 3-4(December 1961), pp. 115-17.11. Alessandro Citolino’s Tipocosmia of 1561, referencedin Barber and Harper pp. 92-3. Francesca Fiorani, TheMarvel of Maps: art, cartography and politics in RenaissanceItaly, (New Haven and London, 2007), p. 90.


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42 IMCoS Journal

28th International Symposium

3rd – 6th October 2010

Britain - Power and Influencein the 17

th & 18

th centuries

Have you seen what you are currently missing!

Take a look at the programme

This is your opportunity for a cartographic visit to London this fall

Visit http://www.imcos.org and click through the International Symposium page to the

London pages where you can see the exciting programme we have laid on. You can indulge

yourself by participating in it all, or you can select those parts which appeal most. Mix with

cartographic friends from around the world in this vibrant city.

Topics and speakers include

The commercial power and influence of London map and chart makers Mary Pedley

The ostentation of estate owners Sarah Bendall

The King’s geographical collections Peter Barber

Atlantic Neptune and the American War of Independence Gillian Hutichinson

European Spheres of Influence in the Pacific Robert Clancy

The East India Company Andrew Cook

Vancouver’s charting in NW America John Robson

Plus visits to important map collections


International Symposium in London.It is not too late to book for the 28th InternationalSymposium being held from 3rd-6th October thisyear. ‘Britain-Power and Influence in the 17th and18th centuries’ will take place at the WellcomeCollection in London and the National MaritimeMuseum, Greenwich. Rates for those who wishto attend for just one or two days are available bycontacting the organisers at [email protected]

There is also a visit to Hatfield House on 30th

September and a pre-symposium tour to Herefordto see the Mappa Mundi over the weekend 1st to3rd October. Yasha Beresiner is also planning olead a cartographic walk round the City ofLondon on Saturday, 2nd October from 11.00 to15.30 (includes a lunch stop).

Society AGM The Annual General Meeting of the Society washeld on Saturday 5th June at the RoyalGeographical Society, London. The President,Sarah Tyacke, was present together with theChairman, Hans Kok, the InternationalRepresentative, Rolph Langlais, the Treasurer,Jeremy Edwards and the Vice-chairman ValerieNewby. Stephen Williams, the General Secretary,joined after a slight delay. It was announced thatthe proposed International Symposium for 2011 inJapan has had to be cancelled. This was for anumber of reasons including the closure of theTokyo Map Society leaving Kazu Yamashita withno help to organise the event. However, RolphLanglais, the International Representative, has saidthat if there are enough interested membersexpressing a desire to visit Japan a small group(restricted to 15 people) might be able to go onan informal tour. This would take place in earlyOctober 2011.

The 2012 symposium will be going ahead inVienna, Austria (date to be advised) and the 2013symposium will be held in Fairbanks, Alaska.Further details available shortly.

The Chairman, Hans Kok, gave his annualreport (see below) and Valerie Newby, Editor ofthe IMCoS Journal reported all was well with thepublication which continues to maintain highstandards. Jenny Harvey, organiser of this year’sLondon International Symposium, reported thatall the plans are going ahead and we are hoping fora good attendance.

The question of the dollar rate for membershipwas raised by the Treasurer, Jeremy Edwards. Dueto fluctuation of the dollar against the pound itwas decided to abolish the specific dollar rate andask American members to pay by credit card(which will automatically give the current rate ofconversion). Jeremy also announced that theannual membership fee will rise to £45 in 2011 tofund the increased costs of running the Society. Itis hoped to hold this price for a number of years.

Kit Batten, the web co-ordinator, asked thatmembers be encouraged to visit the website whichhas been considerably improved. To access themembers only section of the website[www.imcos.org], enter your surname followedby your first initial as given to IMCoSMembership Secretary (no stops) on the first line.When asked for your password enter yourmembership number without any initial zero onthe next line and click ‘Log-in’.

David Webb, the Society photographer, islooking for someone to help him as he has nowreached 80 and needs to appoint his eventualsuccessor.

Annual dinnerThe annual dinner was held on Friday, 4th June atthe Royal Overseas League, St James’s, Londonand was attended by about 50 members.Preceding the dinner, a talk was given by FrancisHerbert, former Map Curator of the RoyalGeographical Society who is well known toIMCoS members as chairman at our collectors’evenings and for his contributions to the IMCoSJournal. His talk, ‘Malcolm Young, his life, travelsand maps’ was about the late former Presidentand first Chairman of the Society. Present at thedinner was Richard Young, Malcolm’s son, whothanked Francis for all the research he had done.Sadly, Malcolm’s wife Diana, was not wellenough to attend.

Following the dinner Tony Campbellannounced the winner of this year’s IMCoS-Helen Wallis Award. In his citation he kept theaudience guessing before announcing that thewinner was London map dealer, Jonathan Potter,who has a map gallery in New Bond Street.

“I doubt there is a single map collector whohas not heard of Jonathan.” Tony Campbell said.“Since the 1970s he has been issuing catalogues

43www.imcos.org

IMCoS Matters

Celebrating 30 years

pp.43-50 IMCoS Matters: IMCOS template (main) 17/8/10 08:07 Page 1

(over 50 of them). His now online 'Encompass'combines a well-illustrated, well-described arrayof often unusual maps with news and notes ontopics of interest to collectors. In connection withthose, or perhaps in honour of a recentlypublished book, Jonathan often holds anunstinting reception, with a talk, in his elegantNew Bond Street premises - for those able toclimb the one flight of stairs, and, more to thepoint, get down safely afterwards.

30 years ago Valerie Newby produced one ofher Map Collector 'Profiles' on Jonathan, who wasalready stressing the need to reach out to a widerpublic. This is the unifying theme of his career.Don't discourage impecunious first-time buyers -just as the Portobello Road stallholders helped himas a boy with pocket money to spend.

Of course today's medium, if you want toreach those who don't yet realise they are mapcollectors, is the Internet, and Jonathan hasdecided to reach out to the twitterati - or mightthis be the work of his ultra-loyal team: LindyMackie, William Latey and Kate Marshal. Yourplane has been grounded by the ash cloud: whynot buy an old map of Iceland; it features anerupting volcano! You saw that large map ofLondon by Rocque on TV last night; well, we'vegot one for sale!

And, demonstrating an ability to reach theparts that other mapsellers don't, what about thisfrom Brides Magazine: ‘Antique maps make greatwedding gifts ... Look for a map of the area whereyou first met your groom.... It'll be an everlastingkeepsake as well as a decorative addition to yourhome.’

Now it is a regrettable fact of life that somemarriages are not 'everlasting'. But instead of theproblem of getting rid of Mr (former) Right'sname tattooed on your left shoulder, you couldjust pop down to Potter's and swap, say, the mapof Essex for one of Kent.

But the best way - the traditional way - to

IMCoS Matters

44 IMCoS Journal

Francis Herbertbeing thanked forhis lecture about

Malcolm Young byMalcolm’s son,

Richard.

President, SarahTyacke, presentingthe IMCoS-HelenWallis Award to

dealer JonathanPotter after theannual dinner.


45www.imcos.org

reach a wide and continuing market is to write abook which Jonathan did in 1988 as The CountryLife Book of Antique Maps, now, in its latest formrenamed, Collecting Antique Maps: An Introduction tothe History of Cartography.

As an Amazon reviewer wrote:‘This book is excellent in that it has a great deal ofvital information for the collector presented in areally interesting way. It covers all the significantmap-makers, engravers, etc., and has an excellentprice guide to give a clear idea of rarity and value.With many beautiful illustrations it is, in my view,the best book of its kind for anyone wishing toenter the world of antique maps.’ Now thatcomment is abundantly true - even if it waswritten by one of Jonathan's staff.

Jonathan's message has always been that mapsare fascinating and (sometimes) surprisinglyaffordable. There must be a number of today's mapcollecting fraternity who got their first taste of ourworld from something he wrote or said.

Map dealers who wish to get more widelyinvolved gravitate to the Antiquarian BooksellersAssociation. Jonathan has been a member for 30years and served with distinction in variouscapacities, including that of President, andcurrently Honorary Treasurer. As chair of theLibrary Liaison Committee, he worked for severalyears to try and improve the relationship betweenlibrarians and booksellers, and to encouragelibraries to make thefts public so that stolenmaterial could be identified and recovered.

Tony Campbell,Jonathan Potter,Sarah Tyacke andchairman Hans Kokpictured at theaward ceremony.Photos by DavidWebb


Jonathan, member No.9, has long been a goodfriend of IMCoS - with the evening receptions at hisshop a delightful prelude to past London Weekends.

Catherine Delano Smith, and I (her co-organiser), are also deeply indebted to Jonathan forhis support (going back 20 years) for the 'Maps andSociety' lecture series at the Warburg Institute.We see some of you regularly there, and IMCoSitself is another of our sponsors.

As I went round sleuthing backgroundinformation for this citation, I was met with a wallof ... enthusiasm. Nobody had a bad word to sayabout Jonathan. He is thoroughly honest, alwayshelpful, modest and, as far as the ABA isconcerned, an ideal President - one who actuallyread what was sent him and acted on it, whilecarrying great authority.

In desperation, I got in touch with my friendKitty Kelley to see what she could dig up. A weeklater she came back with - zilch. 'That guy ofyours is unbelievable. He didn't even take morethan his fair share of the biscuits at coffee-time. Iwouldn't write an exposé on that paragon for atrillion dollars'.

However - although this is not a best man’sspeech - we cannot let our winner escape entirely.I therefore relay the following, from ‘sources closeto Potters’ (which it might be politic to blame onone of the now independently successful peoplewho previously worked for him, RoderickBarron, Ashley Baynton-Williams or TomHarper). Customers would often ring up, askingfor 'Sir Jonathan', assuming he was protected by avast staff, only to find him on the end of thephone. One more than usually besotted reader ofJonathan's book, on realising that the great manwas actually in the shop, went over to him and fellon his knees to offer homage. I am delighted tobe able to cause Jonathan further mildembarrassment about that.

It was recently announced by the DailyTelegraph that Jonathan was to retire - a bit beforehe realised it himself. [But we expect ourjournalists to have foresight, when theirimagination fails them]. Now, Jonathan certainlyhas a 'significant' birthday approaching this autumnand he may have decided the time has come tohand on his 'hobby' to somebody else.

On his website he comments that 'over theyears, numerous clients have remarked on thefriendly nature of the trade'. I think what theywere talking about in particular, was the uniquelyfriendly, outward-reaching nature of the Potterestablishment.

So, in recognition of 40 years of undiminishedenthusiasm, demonstrating that mapselling can be

about a lot more than just buying and selling maps,please acknowledge Jonathan Potter, the winnerof The IMCoS-Helen Wallis Award.”

Chairman’s report for 2009 (presented at theAGM)In most Societies, the AGM is not the favouritepastime of the membership. I am thereforeparticularly grateful to you for showing yourinterest in IMCoS, your IMCoS, by attending thisAGM. We sneakily lured you into attendingmaybe by scheduling the AGM to precede theLondon Map Fair opening.

My report covers the Society’s activities in2009. All in all, we were moderately successful inour achievements over the year. Notwithstandingthe general downturn in the economy and thefinancial crisis, the membership has only gonedown a little. Each year, we are shocked when thenumber of renewals remains behind ourexpectations, but mostly by the time of the AGM,our members, who unintentionally forgot to doso, react to our reminders or realise themselvesthat they still have to renew. The fluctuating ratesof exchange and the UK bank charges for foreigncheques sometimes increase our blood pressure.However, in the future we intend to quote onlymembership fees in British pounds.

Our financial position is still sound. We alsohave a nest-egg which allows us to weatherstorms, if any. The operational accounts show abreak-even for the year 2009, where I forecastearlier that we might run into the red, be it onlymarginally. My slightly cautious prediction,however, I will have to carry-over into 2010, buthope again that our Treasurer will be able to makeboth ends meet also for the current year.

The Executive Committee has held itscustomary four meetings in London. We had a mapevening in the spring of 2009 and our InternationalSymposium in Oslo was a success. The organisersfeared to get stuck with a loss overall, but I spoke toPål Sagen recently, who reported that the lastsubsidies had indeed been coming in and that theSymposium accounts are straightened out close tozero. As you will know, the InternationalSymposiums are organised at the risk of the localorganisation, but we at IMCoS always realise that incase of structural losses, it may be very difficult tofind organisers in future. For our coming LondonSymposium, we have so far been unable to findmore than marginal financial support, meaning thatthe cost will have to be recovered from theregistration fees. I have received a number ofcomplaints, that IMCoS might be considered a richman’s travel club but that is not the case. We are

IMCoS Matters

46 IMCoS Journal


47www.imcos.org

aware, however, of the fact that the total cost of theSymposium itself, added to the individual travelcosts, may push the expense to more than we reallywant. It remains however, that big cities are notcheap in terms of accommodation, both for roomhire at the venue and for hotel accommodation. It isalso a fact of life that in cumbersome times,sponsoring is quickly suffering. We do not envy ourorganisers Jenny and Ian Harvey in this respect.

The IMCoS Journal is greatly appreciated, notonly by our membership; we regularly receivecomplimentary remarks from various sources.Valerie Newby needs to be complimented for herachievements; we are proud to have her on theExecutive Committee.

Last year, we adjusted our philosophy for thewebsite, changed to another provider and werelooking for a new Website Contents manager. Forvarious reasons, it has taken longer to settle, butcurrently Kit Batten is quite active, implementingimprovements from his home base in Stuttgart,Germany. We wish to thank him.

Our marketing efforts have suffered during thepreparations for the big exhibition in the BritishLibrary as our Marketing Consultant, Tom Harper(who is Map Curator at the BL) has been too busy.We trust that he will be available more now thatthe exhibition is in full swing. We have a newNational Representative for the Republic ofKorea, T. J. Kim, who was appointed recently. .

The Helen Wallis Award for 2009 wasbestowed upon Dr. Zsolt Török from Budapest,Hungary. He is known for his cartographicalachievements and is also well known in IMCoScircles.

I would like to conclude my chairman’sreport, informing you that Malcolm Young, ourfounding father in 1980, with membershipnumber 2, has passed away recently. TheExecutive Committee is very sad about his death;he has always kept an eye on his IMCoS Society,advised us and supported us in the background.He will be sorely missed and we offer ourcondolences to Mrs. Young and the family. Hans Kok, IMCoS Chairman

Members visit the BL exhibitionA group of IMCoS members met at the BritishLibrary, London, on 4th June for a conducted tourof the exhibition ‘Magnificent Maps: Power,Propaganda and Art’ at The British Library,London (open until 19th September this year).

All agreed this was an outstanding exhibition.It was prepared by Peter Barber, Head of MapCollections at the BL and Tom Harper, their MapCurator. It follows the success of an earlier

exhibition ‘London: a life in maps’ also staged byPeter Barber three years ago.

The maps in the new exhibition include worksdating from the 1400s to the present day, includingthe largest atlas in the World, the Klencke Atlas ofabout 1600, and what may be the smallest atlas in theWorld from Queen Anne’s dolls’ house at WindsorCastle. Peter Barber and Tom Harper, went through26,000 of the 4½ million maps belonging to thelibrary to select the 100 items which are on display.They have recreated the settings in which the mapswould have been seen originally – from the palace tothe schoolroom, and the exhibition reveals howmaps express an enormous variety of differing worldviews, using size and beauty to convey messages ofstatus and power. A handful of the maps have beenloaned from other museums around the worldincluding a marble fragment of the Forma UrbisRomae dating to 200 AD.

Amongst the items is a manuscript map onvellum showing a chart of the Mediterranean Seadated 1570 by Diogo Homem, the Psalter worldmap made in c.1265, one of the famous Sheldonmap tapestries which takes up an entire wall, andon to a Fred Rose Comic Map of the PoliticalSituation in 1880, which was published during theelection campaign of 1880, and a modern inkjetprint by Stephen Walter called The Island whichwas drawn only two years ago.

If you have not managed to visit thisexhibition (free to everyone) you must because itis truly a force majeur. NB. See article on p.35 of this issue about theKlencke atlas.

Death of Dr Lorenzo Guller FrersWe are sad to announce the death of Dr Frers whowas our International Representative for SouthAmerica from 1984 to 2010.

Dates for your diary3rd-6th October, 201028th International Symposium ‘Britain-Power andInfluence in the 17th and 18th centuries’ at theWellcome Collection and National MaritimeMuseum, London. There is still time to registeronline at http://www.imcos.org and clickingthrough the International Symposium page. Orcontact Victoria Jenkins at CL Events & Venues, 5Leopold Road, Wimbledon, London SW19 7BB,UK. Tel: +44 (0)20 8944 5050; Fax. +44 (0)20 89440866. Email [email protected]

8th March, 20116 pm Collectors’ Evening at the Farmers’ Club,London. Francis Herbert will be in the chair.


48 IMCoS Journal

Peter HarringtonMaps, Charts & Atlases

100 Fulham Road, Chelsea, London SW3 6HSTelephone + 44 (0)20 7591 0220 Website www.peterharrington.co.uk

(Incorporating Old Church Galleries)

Peter Har, Chartspss,Maap

rringtons & Atlases,p ,

elephone +TTe100 Fulham Road, Chelsea,

ebs+ 44 (0)20 7591 0220 W(Incorporating Old Chu

, London SW3 6HS.peterharrington.co.usite wwww.

urch Galleries)uk


49www.imcos.org

You Write to Us

Re Burg HorneckI am referring to the article on p.25 of the Spring2010 Journal (No.120) ‘Burg Horneck: maps inHorneck Castle, Southern Germany’. I enjoyed itvery much but wish to point out that there is anerror in the assertion that the ‘Union of the threenations’ was the three separate Saxon areas.Indeed, the three nations of Transylvania were:Magyars (their emblem being the rising blackeagle), the Seclers [Szekely] (with the sun andcrescent moon as their emblem) and the Saxons,represented by the seven castles of Siebenburgen.The Romanians, at that time mainly nomadicshepherds, were excluded. Not because there wasany discrimination against them but because theydid not have organised permanent settlements.

Another point worth a mention is that whenCeausescu ‘sold’ the Saxons from Transylvania,the West German government paid a reputed sumof DM10,000 for each family to be ‘allowed’ toleave Romania and leave everything behind. Ashameful source of revenue to finance Ceausescu’sgrandiose building project in Bucharest.

I have travelled through and visited many ofthese Saxon towns and villages – easilyrecognisable by their ordered appearance, and it isso sad to see them deteriorate. Prince Charles istrying to help in saving them through theEminescu Foundation.

One last point, there is an error in the captionof Fig.5. The word barcensis is mis-spelt asBaviensis.

László Gróf, Oxford, England

How wrong can you be?“Gerhard Mercator produced the first maps in theworld during 1624. He lived in Duisburg,Germany for most of his life and is considered ason of the city” [explanatory plaque on MercatorAvenue, Gunwharf Quays (shopping centre),Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK].

Below is an edited version of my messagerecently sent to the Gunwharf Quays(Management) in Portsmouth - a mere gunshoteast of the Portsmouth Historic Dockyardcontaining also the Royal Naval Museum with itsCollections (Library, MSS etc):-‘As a visitor to Gunwharf Quays I first noticed –admittedly only in 2006 – its short-length

Mercator Avenue. And transcribed, four years ago,the interesting facts on the Avenue’s explanatoryplaque: the same information remains as up to myvisit recently, when I called in to your InformationOffice to enquire about it. Fact: Mercator (born 5th March 1512, died 2nd

December 1594) indeed ‘lived in Duisburg,Germany for most of his life…’ (i.e. from 1552onwards)Fiction (alas): Mercator ‘produced the first mapsin the world during 1624.’Corrections:-1. By no measure did he produce ‘the first maps inthe world’. These go back several thousand yearsand his first (copper-engraved) map – of the HolyLand – was issued on 6 sheets in 1537.2. Note that in ‘1624’ Mercator had been dead for30 years!

As the scientific/cartographic world ispreparing for the quincentennial, in 2012, ofGerard Mercator’s birth it would be good to knowthat the facts on Gunwharf Quays’ MercatorAvenue might be corrected – or expanded – bythen. Incidentally, as you can discover, Kremer(his father’s family name in German, and whichGerard latinized only in 1530 to Mercator) means‘merchant’, surely an added (commercial) factor toattract more visitors! And, also incidentally, noreason is offered on the plaque as to whyKremer/Mercator is honoured. Could it be thatan implicit reference to the ‘Mercator Projection’and its suitability for sea navigation was intended?’

Francis Herbert (former Curator of Maps, RoyalGeographical Society with IBG) FBCartS

NB. I have received a response from LandSecurities Group plc conveying thanks for an‘informative email regarding Mercator…[which]made us all re-think… our various plaques aroundGunwharf… and amend the plaque as appropriate.This may take some time for a remake…’.

Note from Ed: Do readers know of any othermistakes on plaques etc. which relate to early mapsand cartographers? If so, do please send them in.

Correction: In ‘You Write to Us’ no.121 p.22Jeffrey Douma’s email address should have read:[email protected]


50 IMCoS Journal


Crisis in Cartography

Three impediments to map and chart-making in 1700

by Rodney Shirley

Around 1700 there was increasingconcern among map and chart-makersof all nations over the inaccuracy oftheir basic surveying and charting

parameters. In the simplest terms this embracedthe following three uncertainties.

First, although the compass had been ingeneral use since the Middle Ages there wasuncertainty about the nature and constancy ofthe magnetic variation itself. Second,practitioners disagreed about the shape, or ratherroundness, of the earth. Did it extend at the Poles(prolate in form) or did it bulge at the Equator(oblate in form)? Third, there was no easy andpractical way of measuring longitude - anessential element in determining the location ofplaces and, in particular, the position of ships atsea. Each of these three impediments will bediscussed in turn and, as will be seen, Britishinvestigations and British ingenuity played asignificant part in resolving all three long-standing problems.

The simple floating needle, forming amagnetic compass, seems to have beenrecognised and in use by the Chinese from about1100, a little later by the Arabs, and then byEuropeans. It is uncertain whether the earlymaking of portolan charts with their cardinalroses and rhumb lines reflected any reliance on

compass readings or not. From about 1500 therewere occasional maps or charts showing themagnetic declination (or variation) from truenorth, but no systematic collation or analysis ofcompass readings over a wide area was availablefor navigators.

In the 1680s Edmond Halley, the astronomerand physical geographer, published two paperson the earth’s magnetism in the PhilosophicalTransactions of the Royal Society. He built uponthe early studies of the physician William Gilbertwho in his 1600 work De Magnete was the first topostulate that the earth itself is a great magnet.Gilbert assumed that the magnetic field remainedconstant, and for a time it was anticipated thatmeasurement of the magnetic variation at anyparticular point would help to determine itscorrect longitude. However, this was questionedby a paper written in 1635 by the clergyman-mathematician Henry Gellibrand whoalternatively advanced a method for measuringlongitude based on the observations of eclipses,either of the moon or of the satellites of Jupiter.In practice reliable astronomical measurementscould rarely be made aboard a moving ship norcould good weather be relied upon.

The lack of a comprehensive compilation ofreadings of magnetic variation changed when theAdmiralty (or rather the Navy Board)

51

Fig.1 Edmond Halley’sisogonic world map,as published by R &J Ottens inAmsterdam in the1730s. It is printedon three sheets,joined. From theauthor’s collection.

www.imcos.org

pp.51-58 Three impediments: IMCOS template (main) 17/8/10 08:16 Page 1

commissioned the British ship Paramore toundertake two special voyages (1698–1700)under the command of Halley, appointed as acaptain in the Royal Navy. Among theinstructions for his voyage(s) Halley was directedto attempt to discover what lands lay to the southof the Western [i.e. Atlantic] ocean and - moreimportantly - ‘to seek by observations thediscovery of the Rule of the variation of theCompass.’ On the first voyage his ship theParamore reached as far as 52° south where thecrew met thick fog and mountains of icesufficiently hazardous to induce their returnnorthwards. However, on return, the manycompass observations they had taken wereconsolidated into Halley’s first magnetic orisogonic chart which appeared in 1701 coveringthe North and South Atlantic Oceans.

Shortly afterwards, in 1702, and using thefindings of other voyages, principally those to theFar East, Halley produced his much largerisogonic world map (Fig.1 [whole map previouspage]; Fig 2 [extract below]). The larger map(size 520 x 1440 mm) displayed lines of commonvariation over most oceans excepting the Pacific.It is, however, a little surprising that Halley wasnot aware of the readings of magnetic variation

taken by Abel Janszoon Tasman of at least thewestern Pacific in 1643-44, linked to his coastalexplorations of parts of Australia and NewZealand. It is possible that they were noted butfound to be inconsistent with those recorded in1698-1700.

Unlike his first map of 1701, Halley’s worldmap was copied in several forms. For instance asimplified and reduced-size version (205 x 485mm) was published in Paris in the early 1700swhile the full-size version was re-issued in atlasesby Mount & Page and then copied by the familyfirm Reinier and Josua Ottens from Amsterdamin the mid-1730s. The Ottens’ first map closelyfollowed Halley’s original but shortly afterwardsthey produced a second version which includedstriations representing the trade winds across allthe oceans. Then, in 1756, the Revd. WilliamMountaine and James Dodson updated Halley’soriginal observations and according to NormanThrower1 their revised isogonic world mapcontinued to be issued until at least 1794.

Through Halley’s maps, knowledge of thecorrect magnetic variation at any point, and itssecular change, was of immense value to ships’masters, pilots and navigators worldwide. In suchdeterminations British findings, and the resultant

Crisis in cartography

52 IMCoS Journal

Fig.2Enlarged extract

from Fig.1, showingthe magnetic

variation throughoutthe Atlantic Ocean.

From the author’scollection.


53www.imcos.org

isogonic charts, remained paramount. Halley’scorrected world map was to be used as the basisfor isogonic world maps by French, German andItalian cartographers over the next 100 years.

It needs to be said that a complete explanationof the earth’s magnetic field, its internal nature,and its dependence on other factors such ascontinental drift or cyclical sunspot storms stillremains an unresolved segment of 21st centuryscience. Palaeo-magnetic studies show thatcomplete reversals of polarity have occurred inthe past at an average interval of around 250,000years. As the last such event was some 780,000years ago the current scientific view is thatanother reversal is overdue for recurrence. Theseverity of the impact of reversal on computersand associated networks, and on electricalgeneration and transmission systems worldwide,is conjectural.

The second uncertainty in the early 18thcentury was over the true shape of the world.This was an important factor, as hitherto it hadbeen assumed that the earth was a sphere and therecent trigonometrical survey of France by theCassini family for Louis XIV had beenpredicated on such an assumption. However, ithad been found subsequently that thecalculations for the length of a degree oflongitude for the northern and southern parts ofFrance were not consistent. It seemed that, tosecure harmonisation, it must be assumed thatthe earth was slightly flattened at the Equatorand bulged at the Poles. This was contrary to thetheoretical views put forward by the Englishscientist Isaac Newton and the astronomer JamesBradley who firmly declared that the oppositewas true — the earth bulged at the Equator andwas flattened at the Poles.

To resolve this issue became a matter ofnational pride. The French therefore mountedtwo expeditions in the 1730s: one to make its wayto as near to the Equator as possible and one as farnorth as practicable. The equatorial expeditionwas led under the general direction of Charles-Marie de la Condamine and journeyed acrossSouth America to an area within the province ofQuito, then in Peru, now in Ecuador. This iswhere between 1735 and 1739 basic observationstook place to measure the swing, and hence thegravitational attraction, of a standard pendulumand thus to determine the length of a degree oflongitude. Their findings having been transmittedto Paris, members of the party then split up toreturn home by various routes. The full account ofthis expedition was not published until 1751 underthe authorship of Condamine.

Meanwhile, between April 1736 and August1737 a second expedition was directed tonorthern parts under the leadership of PierreLouis Moreau de Maupertuis. His teamtravelled to Tornea, a small town in Lappland atthe tip of the Gulf of Bothnia. Longitudinalmeasurements were taken trigonometricallyalong a grid extending to Pello, a smallhabitation about 100 miles north of the PolarCircle (Fig.3). While Condamine’s expeditionto Peru was subjected to political interferenceand was hindered by the great heat, Maupertuis(Fig.4) suffered badly from intense cold duringthe winter and the irritations of swarms of fliesin the summer months. Nevertheless therequisite observations were made by bothexpeditions, frequently across icy areas inLappland, in contrast to those made inmountainous or desert conditions in Quitoprovince.

By 1740 the results of the two expeditionshad been closely scrutinised and their respectivecalculations checked and re-checked. A French

Fig.3Map of part ofLappland (1738)where in 1736-1737the expedition ofMaupertuis soughtto determine thegravitationalattraction of theearth and thuswhether it wasflattened at thePoles or at theEquator. From theauthor’s collection.


map of the world produced by Philippe Buachein 1740 (Fig.5), displays two sets of tables basedon the Condamine/Maupertuis expeditions aswell as earlier observations. To the left the tableshows the variable length of a standard pendulumswing according to specific latitudes takenbetween the years 1670 and 1737. Some of theearlier observations are marked with an asterisk‘observation très suspecte’. A second table at thefoot of the map summarises the gravitationalattraction based on pendular observations over arange of latitudes by Isaac Newton, the Englishastronomer James Bradley, and by Maupertuis inFrance.

There was no doubt that the findings shownon this map confirmed that, in accordance withNewton’s views, the earth bulged at theEquator and was flattened at the Poles. Theactual deviations from true sphericity were notgreat, but sufficient to require amendments ofthe respective lengths of a degree of longitude atdifferent latitudes. As exaggeratedly reported innational newspapers, there was great rejoicing inEngland at the time and much gnashing of teethsouth of the Channel.


54 IMCoS Journal

Fig. 4 (right)Portrait of thecosmographer

Pierre Louis Moreaude Maupertuis(1698-1750).

Fig.5 (below) An important

scientific world mapby Philippe Buache,

dated 1740. Itshows the

observations ofgravitational

attraction (related tothe swing of a

standard pendulum)made at different

latitudes in the1670s up to 1737.

The table at the footsummarises

calculations made byNewton, Bradleyand Maupertuis.

From the author’scollection.


Information for thistable was takenprincipally fromThe IllustratedLongitude by Sobeland Andrewes.

55www.imcos.org

The third uncertainty, and perhaps the mostsignificant, was the inability to measure time atsea and thus calculate a vessel’s longitude or trueposition in accurate terms. Ships, cargoes andvaluable lives were continually being lost as aresult of inaccuracies in navigation and indetermining the true position of shoals, rocks andsafe landfall.

One of the worst disasters was the loss ofnearly two thousand men forming part of thefleet under Admiral Sir Cloudisley Shovell whichwas shipwrecked near the Scilly Isles in 1707. Aswell as the troop ships, the Admiral’s ownflagship foundered and was lost with all hands. Inreaction to this and other calamities, in 1714 aBritish Act of Parliament offered up to £20,000to the inventor of a method for determining aship’s longitude to within half a degree (30'); thatis two minutes on the clock. Britain was not theonly nation that was offering a substantial prize towhoever succeeded in solving this problem.

It was well established that the earth rotatesabout its axis, turning through 360 degrees onceevery 24 hours. Thus, every hour of timedifference represents 15 degrees. If a timepiece orastronomical observations at sea could show thecorrect passage of time then the correct longitude

could be calculated. British academic opinionwas split between which option was mostpromising in resolving this problem. Halley andhis later successor as Astronomer Royal, NevilMaskelyne, favoured complex measurementsbased on lunar distances or observations of lunareclipses or those of the satellites of Jupiter. Therival alternative was a timepiece that wasunaffected by changes in temperature likely to bemet on a long sea voyage, and was in some waystabilised to be indifferent to the ups and downsof a ship’s motion.

It was a hitherto little-known Yorkshireclock-maker, John Harrison, who constructed aseries of timepieces incorporating novel featuresthat, over a long period of time, finally met allthe criteria to justify the much sought-after,Parliamentary prize (Fig. 6, overleaf). Over manyyears the Harrison family, father and son, wereactively opposed by vested interests representingproponents of lunar measurements and it wasonly after an appeal to King George III in 1773that long-delayed approval was finally given tothe Harrisons’ justified financial claim.

The ups and downs of the Harrison family’sresearches into the complex requirements for anaccurate timepiece, suitable for use at sea, have

Code & Date Description Novel features Sea Trials Comments

H-11730-1735

4' x 4' x 4'75 lbs weight

Temperature barcompensations;friction-free balances.

Lisbon1736-1737

Reliable, butacknowledged too large andcomplex for naval use.

H-21737-1741

Taller but morecompact than H-1.86 lbs weight

Inherent faults andtherefore no sea trials. ----

Laid asidefor development ofH-3.

H-31741-1757

2' x 2' x 1'60lbs weight

Bi-metallic temperaturecompensation; circularbalance wheels.

----Design overtaken by muchmore compact H-4 watch.

H-41755-1759

Constructed as alarge pocket watch,5" diameter,weight 5 lbs

Same essential designfeatures as H-3.

Jamaica,1761-1762 &1764

Reliability proven.

K-11767-1770

Replica of H-4 Exact copy byLarcum Kendall ----

Taken on Cook’s 2nd voyagein 1772 andreliability further proven.


been described in detail in a book called TheIllustrated Longitude by Dava Sobel and William JH Andrewes.2 Data for the table below is takenfrom this work.

The table summarises the four principalclocks, or chronometers, known as H-1, H-2, H-3 and H-4 that were made by the Harrison familyto meet the Board of Longitude’s strict criteria.Harrison’s original timepieces are on display inthe Royal Observatory at the National MaritimeMuseum, Greenwich.

Following in the Harrisons’ footsteps, othernationalities subsequently constructed and testedaccurate clocks for use at sea. One such enterprisewas the timepiece made by the French horologistJulien de Roy. In the late 1770s after testsinvolving two voyages across the Atlantic thissecured for him the prize offered by the FrenchAcadémie des Sciences.

As the eighteenth century progressed thecontribution by British scientists and craftsmen inresolving these three parameters hindering

mapping and navigation was widely recognised.Halley’s isogonic maps were adapted andreprinted; terrestrial mapping quicklyacknowledged the oblate nature of the earth’scurvature; and due credit in the drawn-out battlebetween the patient Harrison family fromYorkshire and the ‘establishment’ was finallyacknowledged.

Notes1. Norman J W Thrower, The Compleat Platt-maker,1978. Six essays on various aspects of cartography in17th and 18th century England. Essay no.VI ‘EdmondHalley and Thematic Cartography’ includes Halley’sstudies of the earth’s magnetism and his first isogoniccharts, p.200 n.54. 2. Dava Sobel and William J H Andrewes, TheIllustrated Longitude, 1998. This book is recognised asthe classical exposition of the ‘Longitude problem’ andrecounts the half-century of travail of the Harrisonwatch-making family before they were rewardedaccordingly.

Further readingHelen M Wallis and Arthur Robinson (eds.),Cartographic Innovations [various sections], 1987. Simon Berthon and Andrew Robinson, The Shape ofthe World. A broad survey shown visually on GranadaTelevision, 1991. Frank D Stacey & Paul M Davis, Physics of the Earth,2009. An overall geo-physical survey with somemathematical treatment. Chapter 24 deals with theearth’s geo-magnetic field; chapter 25 with rockmagnetism and palaeo-magnetism, also geo-magneticreversals. James R Smith, From Plane to Spheroid, 1986. Includesdiscussion of both the Lappland and Peruvianexpeditions in mathematical detail. (Some members ofIMCoS may remember the talk James Smith gave tothe Society at its Symposium on 21st June, 1967.)

For contemporary historical studies :William Gilbert De Magnete, 1600. Charles Marie de la Condamine [various publications1747 – 1755].Minutes of the Board of Longitude, 1714 – 1828.

The author, Rodney Shirley, is well known to IMCoSmembers as one its founding members and has been aregular contributor to the Journal. He has writtennumerous books that have become standard works ofreference.


56 IMCoS Journal

Fig.6 Portrait of JohnHarrison (1693-

1776). A mezzotintby I. Tassaert after

an oil painting byT.King.

(By courtesy of theScience and Society

Picture Library,London).


57www.imcos.org

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Book Reviews

A look at recent publications about maps

The Imperial Map: Cartography and the Masteryof Empire edited by James R. Akerman. Universityof Chicago Press, East 60th Street, Chicago IL 60637,USA, [email protected] 2009.Cloth (7x10ins), 384 pp., 12 colour plates, 100 half-tones. ISBN 978-0-226-01076-2. Price UK £41,US $60.

This book derives from the 1994 KennethNebenzahl, Jr., Lectures in the History ofCartography at the Newberry Library, Chicago.Admirably edited by James Akerman, Director ofthe Herman Dunlap Smith Center there, theyreflect the work of two remarkable scholars. BrianHarley was to have delivered the 1991 Nebenzahlseries on ‘Colonial Cartographies’ but sadly diedbefore it took place. He had already revolutionisedmap scholarship by situating nearly all cartographywithin discourses of power and ideology, asAkerman’s ‘Introduction’ explains. Lesser writershave often crassly over-simplified Harley’s methods.Another great cartographic historian, DavidWoodward, who organised the early Nebenzhallectures, died just before the 2004 series. Thisvolume embodies their scholarly heritage.

It begins with a magisterial chapter by MatthewEdney on ‘The Irony of Imperial Mapping’,showing that historians, political scientists, andstudents of culture cannot agree on the definitions ofthe words ‘empire’ or ‘imperialism’, let alone‘colony’ and ‘colonialism’. At best there is a vagueconsensus that they all involve some degree ofinequality, subordination, and cultural distinction,but these are characteristics of all known polities ofany size. All states are about claims to dominationover people and territory. Different politicaldiscourses are buttressed by different, self-servingcartographies. ‘Nation states’ are often thinlydisguised regional empires. Mapping is essential tothe creation of national identities but the maps implya uniformity that in human terms seldom exists.‘Western’ cartography spread with the expansion ofEurope, but remains dominant because of its utility.Nothing about a map per se makes it ‘imperial’.

Valerie Kivelson, in a remarkable chapter on thecartography of Tsarist Russia’s Orthodox Christianimperialism in Siberia, demonstrates a continuityreaching right through to Soviet imperialism whichlets us contrast the Russian multinational ‘saladbowl’ approach to the results of expansion with the

American ‘melting pot’ model. Laura Hostelershows how ‘western’ cartographic techniques wereused by the Manchu rulers of the Qing Empire inChina, alongside more indigenous cartographictraditions, to create the spatial image of the allegedlynational state now used by the current Communistregime to justify an often brutal imperialism overnon-Chinese peoples conquered by the Manchu.Neal Safier studies the struggle in Amazonia in theera when rival Spanish and Portuguese imperialmonarchies were desperate to control thecartographic definition of their respective limits.Portugal banned the great Prussian scientist vonHumboldt, fearing his reports would be

pp.59-64 Book reviews: IMCOS template (main) 17/8/10 08:21 Page 1

Book Reviews

60 IMCoS Journal

‘unsympathetic’. Native informants were both vitaland cartographically suppressed. Graham Burnettshows how American maritime charting andmapping in the 19th century Pacific reflected theneeds and expansionist impulses of Americancommerce at the price of a manipulative artificialityof which intelligent contemporaries were wellaware. Lastly, Michael Heffernan looks at themapping of overseas empire by the Press throughtwo London and two Parisian publications in theperiod 1875 – 1925 which saw the last hurrah forformal European expansion. This showed that thePress was far from uniformly supportive ofexpansion and that, due to cost and editorialparsimony, there was surprisingly little use ofcartography.

Beautifully produced and well-illustrated, thisfine volume makes the best of contemporary saneand scholarly map criticism available to any collectorinterested in a fascinating but tricky field.

Bruce P. Lenman, Stirling, Scotland

The Maps of Matthew Paris: MedievalJourneys through Space, Time and Liturgy byDaniel K. Connolly. Boydell & Brewer, P.O.Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF.www.boydell.co.uk (tel.no.+44 (0)1394 610 606or e-mail [email protected]. Pp. xi + 224; 48b/w figures, 10 colour plates. ISBN 978-1-84383478-6. Normal price £50. Special offer price tomembers of IMCoS (25% discount) of£37.50 (Quote special offer code 10171).Please add p & p of £3 for UK; for Europe £6.50and for international £10.

The maps of the chronicler and monk of St.Albans, Matthew Paris (d.1259), comprise pictorialitineraries from London to Palestine, a separatemap of Palestine, a map of Britain, a sketch of theprincipal Roman roads in Britain, a diagrammaticrepresentation of the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy, anda ‘mappa mundi’ primarily concerned with thedepiction of Europe. Valuable work has beendone on Matthew’s maps in the past — especiallyby Richard Vaughan, Suzanne Lewis, and P.D.A.Harvey — but Daniel K. Connolly’s book is thefirst monograph on the subject. In The Maps ofMatthew Paris Connolly contends that a monasticreader would have approached Matthew’sitinerary map as an ‘imagined pilgrimage’ toJerusalem (p. 28). He reads this map as a productof Matthew’s apocalypticism, seeing it as nothingless than a representation of the ‘fulfilment of theDivine Plan’ (p.127), and then asserts itssignificance within the performance of the liturgyat St. Albans. In his final chapter, Connolly arguesthat the version of the itinerary, and the map ofBritain that accompanies it in British Library, MSRoyal 14.C.VII, were copied in the 1290s, andpresented to Edward I as support for his claim tothe overlordship of Scotland.

Connolly’s book is well-intentioned, and hisattention to the physical form of the manuscriptsin which Matthew’s work appears might haveyielded useful results. Unfortunately, The Maps ofMatthew Paris is undermined by sloppy editing,poor Latin, a lack of palaeographical expertise, thedistortion of evidence through selective readings,and ignorance of non-Anglophone scholarship onmaps. I will leave to one side errors of English lexisand grammar, of which there are several (e.g.principle for principal p.110). On a single readingof this book I counted 22 errors in Connolly’sdeployment of Latin terminology, quotations,translations and transcriptions. These mistakesrange from the irritating (‘devotio moderno’ for‘devotio moderna’, p.29) to the embarrassing (hisattempts to transcribe toponyms on Matthew’s


61www.imcos.org

‘mappa mundi’ on p.167 reveal an inability toexpand routine scribal abbreviations), and they callinto question Connolly’s capacity to act as aninformed reader of Matthew’s oeuvre.

More seriously, perhaps, Connolly’sconviction that Matthew’s maps wereoverwhelmingly spiritual in nature leads him toignore features that do not fit his thesis. Matthew’sitinerary – indeed, all of his maps – show a livelyinterest in secular history and contemporarypolitical events. Connolly’s assertion thatMatthew’s rather low-key representation ofJerusalem is ‘overflowing with symbolism of anapocalyptic presence of Christ’ (p.134) isoverstated. The connections he makes with theliturgy are tenuous, and, contrary to hisspeculation, the material in Royal MS 14.C.VIIwould have done nothing to bolster Edward I’sassertion of sovereignty over Scotland. Animportant strand of recent thinking, led by thework of Patrick Gautier Dalché, has emphasisedthe pragmatic function of medieval maps, withoutseeking to deny them spiritual significance.Connolly, instead, wants to lock Matthew withinthe cloister. Unfortunately for The Maps ofMatthew Paris, the evidence of Matthew’s maps —mostly well reproduced in the book’s illustrations— strongly suggests that rigid distinctions betweenthe cloister and the outside world cannot bemaintained, and that geographical description wasnot, for Matthew, viewed through a veil ofapocalyptic fervour.

Alfred HiattQueen Mary, University of London

La Carta de Gabriel De Vallseca de 1439 byRamon J. Pujades i Bataller. Lumenartis, AvenueDiagonal, 468 -08006 Barcelona www.lumenartis.net.Facsimile edition, hardback, 23 x 33 cm, 358 pages.ISBN: 13: 978-84-612-3682-4. €129.

Dr. Ramon Pujades continues his tour de force inthe world of portolan charts1 with this book —the companion to the facsimile chart of GabrielDe Vallseca. Pujades, like Jaume Riera and G.Llompart,2 to whom he dedicates this work,moves past the mythology of the so-calledMajorcan School of Cartography that survives todate and establishes a solid historical and socialbackdrop to bring Gabriel de Vallseca to centrestage.

With this objective in mind, the first three offour sections of the book help us place Vallseca’schart in its historical context by providing aconcise but rigorous introduction to the world

of nautical charts, mappaemundi and atlases,leading to the high Middle Ages. Significant tothis introduction is the statement that portolancharts are an Italian invention and all chartsproduced in Majorca (and elsewhere) werecopies based on a few models, like those of the1300s by Vesconte and Dulceti (who settled inMajorca), as well as later works of theirGenovese compatriots, the Beccari family. Thisreveals that in the history of portolan charts,there were a handful of true cartographers andnumerous copy artists and miniaturist illustrators.

Five works of Gabriel de Vallseca havesurvived to our time (three signed, twoattributed). It is sobering to consider how littlehas survived if one considers Pujades’s statementthat his atelier probably saw nearly 2,000 worksproduced. This statement is based on afascinating document in which Vallseca agrees tosettle a debt by providing the debtor with 28charts, four immediately, and the rest over sixmonths. This yield of one chart per week givesus the remarkable number of charts over the 38years of activity in this area. Most of these chartswould have been of a utilitarian nature used byseamen and merchants and would lack thedecorations and miniatures, flags and legendsthat we see in the luxurious models intended forrich clients like the 1439 chart that occupies us.

Pujades pieces together an intriguingbiography based on extensive documentation.Gabriel de Vallseca would have been born inBarcelona around the year 1391. This is theinfamous year when many of the Jewish Calls(quarters) in the Iberian Peninsula weredestroyed — including the ones in the City ofMajorca (modern Palma) and Barcelona — andthe Jewish population was forced to convert toChristianity. Gabriel de Vallseca was born into aJewish family. His last name ‘De Vallseca’ comesfrom the wealthy Barcelona family of jurists thatacted as godfathers during his conversion or thatof his parents. Although we do not know hisoriginal Jewish name, we know he had close tiesto the Miró family, to whom his wife Floretabelonged, and he himself may have been a Miróas well.

Vallseca lived in Barcelona until becoming ofage. His residence in Barcelona in the early1400s would have placed him in contact withthe influential Genovese cartographer Beccari.He moved to Majorca around 1430, where hedied between 1471 and 1478. His move toMajorca could have been triggered by acommercial opportunity based on a shortage ofnautical charts in the island after the decline of


Jewish convert ateliers around that period —Barcelona not being a place of production butredistribution of charts. Vallseca resided in theCity of Majorca neighbourhood of the church ofSanta Creu (Holy Cross). Living near theharbour made him a neighbour of hiscontemporary Rafael Soler, the heir to aChristian family of map-makers. Pujades remarkson the eclectic style of Vallseca, who draws inhis 1439 chart from Dulcentian and Cresquianinfluences, as well as from the new updatesintroduced by Beccari and the Soler atelier.

Vallseca’s entrepreneurial nature is illustratedby Pujades: dealings in real estate, commerce offabrics, and the purchase and reselling of slaves,including a daughter born to a slave — 13,000slaves existed in the island at the time and werea key component of the medieval economy.

Pujades’ expertise as a paleographer and hisattention to detail when studying Vallseca’s mapsand those of his contemporaries allows him to

conclude a number of things about Vallseca: hewas not instructed in Latin and he most likelywas a miniaturist painter turned map-maker asopposed to being a map-maker instructed in afamily atelier.

This extensive background makes one seewith new eyes what all along has been anaesthetically pleasant object of art. In this map,which covers so much of the known world ofthat time from Scandinavia to the sub-Sahara,from the Azores to Turkestan — one nownotices so many new things: the depiction of theAzores for the first time with its nine majorislands, the similar scales of the Mediterraneanand the Atlantic, the almost three-dimensionaleffect in the scale bar, the Arabic-like motif ofthe border of the chart. Pujades has directed ourattention to these things and many others duringhis brilliant exposition, always precise and factualbut never overly technical.

The book itself is of the highest quality,richly illustrated and beautifully laid out. Itincludes a painstaking enumeration of all 1,854toponyms on the map, all 68 flags and shields,and all 18 geo-cultural explanatory legends in ahandy loose-leaf poster size comparing them toother contemporary maps. An index would havebeen most welcome to help refer back to all ofthis rich material.

A translation of the original Catalan textappears in Spanish and English. As someone inthe process of translating the research of Rieraand Llompart, I can empathise with the difficultyof translation from a romance language toEnglish a body of knowledge that was developedin the high Middle Ages in Catalan itself, amongother tongues. The English translation is fluidand accurate. The nautical terms are alwaystricky and perhaps derroter (Spanish derrotero)would translate better as ‘piloting guides’ asopposed to ‘nautical guides’ and ‘boatswains’ arenot pilots (spelled the same in Catalan and inEnglish) but contramestres (a word never usedby Pujades), but this does not take away fromthe fluid narrative of this magnificent work inthe history of cartography.

Pujades’ volume is the companion of afacsimile chart3 which is a beautiful reproductionof Vallseca’s chart with the attention to detailthat characterizes this publisher. The original ison display at the Museu Marítim in Barcelona.Suffice it to say that the infamous ink staincaused by the mishap that took place when themap was shown to George Sand and her loverFryderyk Chopin while in Majorca in 18384 iswell reproduced, as well as the famous

Book reviews

62 IMCoS Journal


63www.imcos.org

apocryphal note on the verso mentioning thatthe chart belonged at some point to AmerigoVespucci himself.

Juan Ceva, Vice-President California MapSociety

Notes:1. His previous work on portolan charts was laudedby Tony Campbell as “a new benchmark”. Ramon J.Pujades i Bataller. Les Cartes Portolanes: laRepresentació Medieval d'una Mar Solcada. [In Catalan,with English text 'Portolan charts: the MedievalRepresentation of a Ploughed Sea']. (Barcelona: InstitutCartogràfic de Catalunya; Institut d'Estudis Catalans;Institut Europeu de la Mediterrània; Lunwerg, 2007).[With a DVD featuring the charts and selections ofthe atlases cited.] ISBN: 10: 8497854144. 13: 9788497854146.2. Jaume Riera is a Hebraist and the Secretary of theArxiu de la Corona de Aragó (Archive of the Crown ofAragon) in Barcelona. He is responsible among otherthings for the landmark biographies of CresquesAbraham and his son Jafudà Cresques. Father GabrielLlompart is a historian and author of many works on theJewish map-makers of Majorca of the high Middle Ages.3. Chart 75 x 112 cm, with protective box. Limitedprint run of 950 numbered copies; ISBN: 13: 978-84-612-3680-0 (complete work). Book/facsimile set€958. www.lumenartis.net4. Winter in Majorca by George Sands with JoséQuadrado’s Refutation of George Sand, translated andannotated by Robert Graves. Cassandra Editions,Academy Press Limited, Chicago, 1978. p. 63.

Cartographic Encounters: Indigenous Peoplesand the Exploration of the New World byJohn Rennie Short. Reaktion Books, 33 GreatSutton Street, London EC1V 0DX Tel. (0)207153 1071, www.reaktionbooks.co.uk.Hardback, 176 pp. plus index, 49 illustrations inblack and white (including maps). ISBN 978 186189 436 6 Price UK £22.50 US$45.00.

Indigenous Peoples and the Exploration of the NewWorld, the subtitle of this latest book by a prolificscience author, gives a fair idea of the content.From Columbus to Lewis and Clark andbeyond, Short describes the important role thefirst inhabitants of the New World played in theexplorations of their lands by Europeans. Withtypical arrogance, the Old World wrote of theirbrave explorers in the new countries, toilingover unknown mountains and crossing alienrivers, sustained by their courage and desire toadd new territories for king and country. The

native inhabitants, while written of by theexplorers, were ignored by historians. Whatglory was to be found in celebrating the Indianswho guided them? They were primitive peoplewho knew nothing of paper, let alone how todraw a proper map. Over and over Shortcontrasts some well-known explorers such asWalter Ralegh, Fremont, Louis Hennepin, andLewis and Clark whose names are householdwords while the names of their Native guides areunknown.

Short documents the actual aid given to theexplorers. In fact, although not in the book, it issaid all early roads in the United Statesoriginated as Indian trails. Since those who livedthere knew intimately their mountain passes,river fords, and generally the best ways totraverse the landscape, this is likely true.

At the close of the volume, the author showsthat explorers’ relations with the Natives wentfrom supplicants to ignoring them once theirinformation, food, and guidance were no longerneeded. In fact, when the continent wasmapped, the Indians were in the way. Thatbegan the rounding up of the first dwellers inNorth America and sending them off toreservations, usually on land no one else wanted.This shameful practice has ceased, althoughtoday Indian numbers are pitifully few.

Short mentions but does not fully explore,the skill which many tribes used to ally theEuropeans with them and against theirtraditional enemies. After floods of whites cameWest, it was too late.

A major shortcoming of the book is thefailure to go into the indigenous maps of theindigenous people. Yes, they could use sand orpebbles or whatever Europeans couldunderstand, but their own maps were verydifferent. These were mental and existed onseveral layers. Experts in the field such as BarbaraBelyea of the University of Calgary and KeithBasso, retired professor from the University ofNew Mexico are ignored. Is Short aware ofthem? They are not in the bibliography. Or didhe think truly Native maps unimportant? Itwould be nice if he told us.

Minor shortcomings are the constantrepetition of the phrase ‘cartographicencounters’ and the use of the term ‘NewWorld’ when he means North America alone.

Overall, this is a newish field, there arenumerous illustrations, and the writing adequate.Recommended if the subject interests you.

Dee Longenbaugh, Juneau, Alaska


64 IMCoS Journal

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105


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CartographicaNeerlandica

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66 IMCoS Journal


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IMCoS Journal

National RepresentativesAmerica, Central: Jens P. Bornholt, 4a Avenida 13-11, Zona 10,

Guatemala C.A. (for mailing address see membership list)Australia: Prof. Robert Clancy, P.O. Box 891, Newcastle, NSW 2300Austria: Dr Stefaan J. Missinne, Unt. Weissgerberstr. 5-4, 1030 ViennaBelgium: Phillippe Swolfs, Nieuwe Steenweg 31, Elversele, 9140Canada: Edward H. Dahl, 720, chemin Fogarty, Val-des-Monts,

Québec J8N 7S9Croatia: Dubravka Mlinaric, Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies,

Trg Stjepana Radica 3, 10 000 ZagrebCyprus: Michael Efrem, P.O. Box 22267, CY-1519 NicosiaFinland: Jan Strang, Jatasalmentie 1, FIN-00830 HelsinkiFrance: Andrew Cookson, 4 Villa Gallieni, 93250 VillemombleGermany: Dr Rolph Langlais, Klosekamp 18, D-40489 DüsseldorfGreece: Themis Strongilos, 19 Rigillis Street, GR-106 74 AthensHungary: Dr Zsolt Török, Department of Geography, Eötvos Univ.

Ludovika 2, BudapestIceland: Jökull Saevarsson, National & University Library of Iceland,

Arngrimsgata 3, IS-107 Reykjavik, Reykjavik 101Indonesia: Geoff Edwards, P.O. Box 1390/JKS, Jakarta 12013Israel: Eva Wajntraub, 4 Brenner Street, JerusalemItaly: Marcus Perini, Via A. Sciesa 11, 37122 VeronaJapan: Kasumasa Yamashita, 10-7-2-chome, Sendagaya, Shibuya-ku,

TokyoKorea: T.J. Kim, 137-070 JF, Hansung B/D 1431-13, Seocho-dong,

Sepchu-Gu, Seoul [email protected]: Alma Brazieuniene, Universiteto 3, 2366 VilniusMexico: Martine Chomel de Coelho, A.P. 40-230, Mexico 06140 DFNetherlands: Hans Kok, Poelwaai 15, 2162 HA LisseNew Zealand: Neil McKinnon, P.O. Box 847 TimaruNorway: Päl Sagen, Josefinesgt 3B, P.O. Box 3893 Ullevål Stadion,

N-0805 OsloPhilippines: Rudolf Lietz, POB 2348 MCPO, 1263 Makati, Metro ManilaRepublic of Ireland: Rory (Roderick) Ryan, 33 Hampton Court, Vernon Avenue,

Clontarf, Dublin 3Romania: Mariuca Radu, Muzeul de Istoria Brasov, Str. Nicolae Balcescu

Nr.67, 2200 BrasovRussia: Andrey Kusakin, Apt.46 Potaporskiper, 101000 Moscow, RussiaSingapore & Malaysia: Julie Yeo, 3 Pemimpin Drive 04-05,

Lip Hing Industrial Bldg, Singapore 1024South Africa: Elizabeth Bisschop, P.O. Box 26156, Hout Bay, 7872Spain: Jaime Armero, Frame SL. General Pardiñas 69, Madrid 6Sweden: Leif Äkesson, Vegagatan 11, S-392 33 KalmarThailand: Dr Dawn Rooney, Nana P.O. Box 1238 Bangkok 10112Turkey: Ali Turan, Dumluca Sok 9, Beysukent, 06530 AnkaraUSA, Central: Kenneth Nebenzahl, P.O. Box 370, Glencoe, Ill 60022USA, East: Robert A. Highbarger, 7509 Hackamore Drive, Potomac,

MD 20854USA, West: Bill Warren, 1109 Linda Glen Drive, Pasadena, CA 91105

Front cover picture: ‘Tabula Magnae Britanniae Angliam Scotiam etHiberniam’ by Claes Janszoon Visscher (under his latinised name NicolausIohannis). The map originated in the early 1620s and was engraved byAbraham Goos. This copy is dated 1650. (By courtesy of Rodney Shirley)

68

Index of Advertisers

Altea Gallery 48Clive Burden 6Cartographic Associates 24Cartographica Neerlandica 65Frame 58J.A.L. Franks 65Garwood & Voigt 67Peter Harrington 48Leen Helmink inside back coverMurray Hudson 58IAMA 40-41Intercol 67Kitt S. Kapp 66Librairie Le Bail 66Loeb Larocque 66The Map House inside front coverMapRecord Publications 64Map World 57Martayan Lan outside back coverMostly Maps 65Kenneth Nebenzahl 57The Observatory 67Old World Auctions 50Kunstantikvariat Pama AS 14Paris Map Fair 33Philadelphia Print Shop 64Gonzalo Fernández Pontes 34Jonathan Potter 2Prime Meridian 66Reiss & Sohn 34Antiquariaat Sanderus 13Kunstantiquariat Monika Schmidt 33Sotheby’s 4Paulus Swaen 67Swann Galleries 24Wattis Fine Art 26Dominic Winter 13

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THEMAP HOUSE

OF LONDON(established 1907)

Antiquarian Maps,Atlases,

Prints & Globes

54 BEAUCHAMP PLACE KNIGHTSBRIDGE LONDON SW3 1NYTelephone: 020 7589 4325 or 020 7584 8559

Fax: 020 7589 1041Email: [email protected]

www.themaphouse.com


FINE ANTIQUE MAPS, ATLASES, GLOBES, CITY PLANS VIEWS&

Valletta, Malta from Jansson's Theatrum Urbium (1657), complete with 500 plates in eight vols. The largest and most beautiful, early city atlas. Splendid period color throughout; pristine condition. Very rare--one edition only.

Visit our beautiful map gallery at

70 East 55th St. (Between Park & Madison Avenue)

New York, New York 10022

212-308-0018 • 800-423-3741 (U.S. only) • [email protected]

Recent acquisitions regularly added at

martayanlan.comContact us to receive a complimentary printed catalogue or register on our web site.

We would be happy to directly offer you material in your collecting area; let us know

about your interests. We are always interested in acquiring fine antique maps.

GALLERY HOURS: Mon-Fri, 9:30-5:30 and by appointment.

Spring 2010 Number 120

For People Who Love Early Maps

journal
