The Art of Maps - Catalog 53

Cartography can be an art. In our most recent catalog we include the cartographic works of artists like Art Spiegelman, Etta Garson, Ruth Taylor, Ernest Dudley Chase, and even James Whistler. It's the artist's approach that reaches beyond dry geography and brings a region or topic to life. For instance, James Whistler, in his first printed work, made a map for the Anacapa Islands off the California coast. The map is richly detailed and includes a detailed shore profile, giving the perspective of how a sailor would see the coast. But Whistler didn't stop there, he included birds flying nearby and grasses blowing along the shore, unfortunately his bosses at the U.S. Coast Survey didn't find it fitting and in short time decided Whistler didn't fit in either.

Decades later, such infusions of expression and perspective into cartography would find a welcome home in work such as that of Frank Dorn, a student of Chinese history and while in the army was stationed in Asia where he produced a find map for modern Beijing, then "Peiping". His map is an artistic impression of the city, its many colors and cultures showing not just the points of tourist interest but a bit of the feel of the town.

Please review our latest catalog online, through our webpage at http://www.oldmapgallery.com/

A Man with Map Madness

A recent article on part of the team...

http://www.du.edu/magazine/archive/2007/04/People.html

Summer Catalog - Globes & Oddities

Greetings,

Catalogs are a lot of work, and perhaps we start seeing things that aren't there after a while, but it seems like in every catalog we can begin to see themes. Sometimes, just by a fluke, we end up with a number of good things that trace the development of a region or city. Not that we are clever enough to intentionally do it, but they just kind of all arrive organically, without a lot of conscious effort on our behalf, just buying what crosses our paths and lands in our laps.

In this catalog we have amassed an unusual selection of globes...but not the kind you remember from grade school...these contraptions were the latest inventions that were going to make the old style of globes obsolete. Globes that inflate, expand with internal armatures, or simply unfold into three dimensional depictions of the planet. There are three such rarities in this catalog, as well as many other rarities and decorative items. Please visit our webpage and take a look under the category labelled "Catalog 52". http://www.oldmapgallery.com/

As always, Enjoy!

Curtis & Alanna Bird

The Old Map Gallery

http://www.oldmapgallery.com/

A Whimsical Perspective - Daniel K. Wallingford

If you've ever seen the whimsical, distorted maps that show the United States such the "Map of the United States as Californians See It" (1947), or the "A United States Map as the Floridian Sees It" (1948), or the New Yorker magazine covers by Saul Steinberg (1976), they all probably found their beginning in the these first maps of Daniel K. Wallingford.

Done with a wonderful tongue in cheek style, the maps slant the importance of parts of the country, exaggerating some parts and diminishing and chaotically mixing others as a pun of their irrelevance.
Perhaps his most popular, the "New Yorkers Idea of the United States of America" was published initially published 1928, and wonderfully jumbled the nation with a huge prejudice toward the world of NYC, Brooklyn and Staten Island. There were several different editions of the map which we've encountered including 1937, given away in relation to the Times Book Fair by the Columbia University Press. The following image is for the later edition which is estimated at 1939-40 for its "New York World's Fair" notation.



Wallingford's other early gem, was his "This Map Presents A Bostonian's Idea of The United States of America". Published c.1928, it has some comical surrounding commentary, and a heavily distorted map of the Cape Cod and Boston area, where little exists beyond Massachusett's western border. A small inset shows "Boston and its Environs". This instance with contemporary hand color.





For these and other pictorial maps, please visit us at http://www.oldmapgallery.com/

The Intersection of Art & Science

For the last twenty years we have spent our time locating and selling antique maps and books. While we specialize in the mapping of the US and specifically the West, we also have a weakness for those maps that give an insight into the culture of the time.

Maps have been described as an intersection of the art and science of the time. It's the latest technology, mixed with that cultures understanding, priority and sense of presentation.

There is a whole genre of maps, called "pictorial" maps that experienced a boom in the early twentieth century, they are just thick with the culture and feel of the time.

We have a bit of a weakness for these kind of things.

Maps such as the things done by the great poster artist Lucien Boucher have a feel and aesthetic rich with a modern sense of French design. (Sorry for the glare)

Or historically, the "Herr Hitler's Map" by Yandley shows a pre-War II propaganda campaign by the Americans against the impending onslaught of Hitler. Done in 1938 it shows the cultural assault of the Nazis and even notes "Concentration Camps" in Austria.