08 December 2016
MacDonald Gill: original drawing goes on show today
One of the key exhibits in Maps & the 20th Century: Drawing the Line - in fact one of the key maps of the 20th century - is a world map of 1942 by MacDonald Gill. Called 'The "Time and Tide" map of the Atlantic Charter', the map was published (in Time and Tide magazine) to commemorate the signing of a wartime agreement between Britain and the United States of America in August 1941.
MacDonald Gill, The "Time and Tide" Map of the Atlantic Charter.London, 1942. British Library Maps 950.(211.).
The treaty, which was agreed by Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt on a warship moored off Newfoundland, set out their aspirations for a post-war peace, including self-determination and global economic freedom. This symbol of friendly co-operation between Britain and the USA was designed as a threat to the Axis powers, for the USA was not at that time at war with them. The 'special relationship' dates from here.
The map brilliantly illustrates a world, unified under the sun and with images of trade and prosperity. It is a post-war Utopian vision that has been made possible by the treaty.
MacDonald Gill, ' The Atlantic Charter', 1942. Private collection.
MacDonald Gill was a highly successful British illustrator who produced work for customers as varied as London Transport, the Tea Market Expansion Board, Cable & Wireless Ltd., and St. Andrew's church, Sunderland.
He was a particularly skillful draftsman, as visitors to Drawing the Line can see from today when the original pen sketch for the Atlantic Charter replaces the printed version on display. As Gill experts Caroline Walker and Andrew Johnston have noted, Gill seems to have applied ink directly to the paper without any need for preparatory sketches or guide lines, and there isn't a smear of Tippex in sight.
Even more amazingly, the drawing has original signatures of Churchill and Roosevelt pasted onto it.
Maps & the 20th Century: Drawing the Line is open until 1 March.
05 December 2016
Map: friend or foe?
Our relationships with maps changed very dramatically in many different ways in the 20th century. One of the important changes is not only that maps became more widespread and familiar, but how that affected our relationships with them. The examples in the exhibition richly illustrate many of these changes, but one trend I would like to focus on here is the recognition that the power of maps became increasingly hidden as they became more accurate and realistic.
Perhaps the most iconic example in the exhibition is the Van Sant first map of the earth from space that appeared in Scientific American in 1990. This immense technological achievement has often been described as “showing the real world as it appears from space” (www.tomvansant.com). But it was also a huge artistic achievement. And it both symbolised and contributed to the decline of the traditional map maker. This is a kind of photograph, and photographs don’t lie.
But think about this claim for just a moment as you look at it: no clouds; daylight around the whole planet; the Atlantic ice at its summer limit. This image is, as the article recognises, “equal parts software and artistic judgement”. Is this “the real world as it appears from space”? Or is it an interpretation, much like any other map? There is no doubt that publication of this image marked a massive milestone for maps in the 20th century. It seems to be so very different from imperial propaganda maps for example. And yet, as the exhibition explores, maps are by nature unreliable witnesses – misleading their readers as well as informing them.
The label ‘critical cartography’ was coined in the 20th century to describe a way of looking at maps. Critical geographers questioned their hidden assumptions and compromises, and revealed their inherent unreliability and partial truth. They did so not to invalidate maps, but to understand their power more thoroughly. This approach shared much with ‘critical’ developments in the 20th century in other areas of life, such as epic theatre, literary theory, cultural geography, and educational policy.
The exhibition explores the profound incursion of maps into everyday life in the 20th century. At the same time, the profound social, political and cultural changes often hidden in everyday life can also be seen in the development of maps and especially in understanding our relationship to them.
Further Reading:
Wood, Denis. 1992. The Power of Maps, New York/London: The Guilford Press
Harley. J.B. 2001. The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography. (Edited by Paul Laxton). Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Huw Rowlands
24 November 2016
20th Century Panoramaniac
I love panoramas and this one inspired my love of the Alps and mountain mapping.
Heinrich Berann, [Jungfraubahn mountain railroad, Switzerland], 1939. British Library Maps 1060.(4.).
Panoramas form a fascinating niche collection within the 4.5 million maps in the British Library’s collections. They have a long history and my second favourite is the 1851 fabric view of London produced for the Great Exhibition with south at the top and the original ‘Crystal Palace’ laid out in Hyde Park.
Changing mapping technologies have influenced the panorama and its uses in war, discovery and peaceful pursuits especially winter sports.
Heinrich Berann, Atlantic Ocean Floor, 1968. ©National Geographic
The British Library's current exhibition Maps & the 20th Century: Drawing the Line showcases the finest exponent of the late 20th century, Heinrich Berann (1915-1999) and his panorama of the Atlantic sea-bed. An Austrian, Berann began with his Grossglockner Hochalpenstraße of 1934 and his final panoramas of U.S. ski areas came out in the mid 1980s.
My favourite is one I discovered while sipping a non-alcoholic beverage in a street café in Interlaken and is a paper beer tray mat with an image of Berann's Bernese Oberland panorama (top image). Under the glass, this utterly stunning piece of art showed the whole area in perfect, sunny weather, a wispy cloud over the Jungfrau, each railway, road and mountain in perfect detail. It made me want to explore more… once the rain clouds had dispersed of course. And it was there to be got wet, scrunched up and thrown in the bin… how!
This map made me realise there was more to maps than an my trusty Ordnance Survey sheet of Hexham, no matter how good they were, and I wanted to discover more about cartography in all its facets. Berann is no longer with us but his panoramas still inspire cartographers and art lovers alike.
See more of Berann's stunning work here
Maps & the 20th Century: Drawing the Line is now open
Dave Watt
11 November 2016
Colouring maps for adults
Adult colouring books. Leave it to the kids? Whether you’re addicted to them, or bamboozled by their appeal, they’re probably here to stay. Adult colouring atlases (currently for sale in the British Library shop) are particularly interesting, and not so peculiar as you might think because before printed colour came in during the late 19th century, by hand is exactly how maps were coloured.
It wasn’t so usual to use colouring pencils in, say, the 18th century. Instead it was usually a water-based paint such as watercolour or the thicker gouache which could provide a brighter and smoother finish.
Daniel Stoopendaal after Isaac de Moucheron, 'Plan or View of Heemstede in the province of Utrecht'. Amsterdam: [N. Visscher], ca. 1700. Maps C.9.e.9.(25.).
There were certainly expert map colourists, for example the artist who coloured prints such as the one above from the British Library's sublime 18th century Beudeker Atlas (online version here). Something to aspire to, colouring book enthusiasts.
But colouring maps wasn’t as glamorous a pastime as you may think. There are rumours, for example, that among others the 19th century London mapmaker John Tallis used child labour for the colouring of his maps. Looking closely at the outline colour in the map below, I think we can all agree that a gold star was probably not so forthcoming.
John Tallis, 'North America'. From Tallis's Illustrated Atlas and Modern History of the World. London, 1851. Maps 5.e.25.
So when you next find yourself daydreaming as you delicately shade pale pink just the right side of a printed line, spare a thought for those browbeaten children who would likely have had at least 50 atlases to complete before bedtime.
Our exhibition Maps & the 20th Century: Drawing the Line is now open.
22 September 2016
A Journey to Bookland
The British Library has recently acquired a most appropriate addition to its map collection: a map of ‘Bücherland’ (Bookland), designed and drawn in 1938 by the German painter and illustrator Alfons Woelfle (1884-1951).
Karte des Bücherlandes
Woelfle’s map was specifically inspired by Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf’s fantasy map of an Empire of Love, ‘Das Reich der Liebe’, issued in 1777 to advertise Breitkopf’s method of printing maps with moveable type. Woelfle used the more conventional form of lithography, but took Breitkopf’s model of creating a fantasy land where the geographical features have an allegorical significance.
Reich der Liebe. From Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf, Beschreibung des Reichs der Liebe, mit beygefügter Landcharte (Leipzig, 1777) 116.l.31]
Together with his publisher, Georg Heimeran, Woelfle clearly had a wonderful time creating Bücherland, which represents the writing, printing, publishing, selling and reading of books through its witty geography. He also added decorative flourishes typical of Baroque design, such as the draped female figure in the bottom left-hand corner holding an open book.
The capital of Bücherland is Officina (‘Printing-House’), in the Vereinigte Buchhandelsstaaten (‘United States of Bookselling’). A separate plan of Officina appears in the top right-hand corner of the map, highlighting such sights as the Boulevard of Mass Editions, the elegant Quarter of Publishers’ Villas and what is, perhaps surprisingly, the only Library in Bücherland. Outside the city the pirate publishers have their building plots.
To the south lie Recensentia, where book reviewers no doubt lurk in the Critical Woods, and Makulatura, the region of waste paper, with its Pyramids of Forgotten Books and where even the Dramatic Volcano is extinct. By contrast, the lyre-shaped southernmost province of Poesia, just below the Tropic of Literature, boasts Blooming Meadows of Fantasy and a Laurel Heath; some fortunate travellers may even scale the Foothills of the Classics to reach the Summit of Fame, although the less lucky could find themselves sinking in the Gulf of Disappointments to the west or wrecked on the Cape of Failed Hope to the east.
Bücherland Poesia detail
Straddling the border of Poesia and the neighbouring Leserrepublik (‘Republic of Readers’) are Castle Platitude and the Commonplaces. Having safely avoided them, travellers can wade through the Erotic Swamp to the Plantations of Bestsellers, and visit such features as the Lake of Popular Editions, the Tents of the Book Clubs and the Urban Literature Mines. However, presumably off-limits to visitors, in the middle of the Republic lies the Forbidden Province – perhaps an allusion to the fate of the many books and authors banned under the Nazis in 1930s Germany.
Bücherland Verbotene Provinz
In the hills on the northern border of the Leserrepublik are the Caves of Bookworms; the map shows a giant worm emerging from one of them. Beyond is the northernmost region of Bücherland, where the Paper River rises at the Fount of Knowledge and travels through the Cellulose Woods, and the Lake of Ink, past the dangerous Ravine of Misprints, eventually reaching Officina and flowing out past Fort Censorship and the Lighthouse of the Publishers’ Association into the Sea of New Publications.
Bücherland bookworm
Finally, those wishing to visit Bücherland’s islands can choose between Treasure Island of Adventure Stories and the little archipelago comprising the islands of Unica (with its Bay of Ephemera), Rara and Curiosa.
Although the world of books has changed in may ways since 1938, travellers in the Booklands of today will still find much to guide and entertain them in Woelfle’s map.
Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Studies
17 June 2010
David Starkey and Peter Barber
A formidable double act indeed.
We now have a podcast of 'The Map in the Palace' event, recorded in our Conference Centre on 14 June.
The inimitable Dr David Starkey and Head of Maps Peter Barber discuss the importance of maps in medieval and early modern palaces, and how they combined art, science, and power to enhance their impact.
Warning! It lasts for 70 min 38 sec, so don't try to download it if you are on a slow internet connection.
(Or play it in your default media player.)
This link will take you to our Magnificent Maps podcast page
23 April 2010
The Beauty of Maps #3
Ah, beauty is all around us: in the air we breathe, the people we meet... and the maps we look at. Last night's programme on BBC4 focused upon the incredible cartographic production of the 16th- and 17th-century Dutch printing houses, which managed to fuse scientific precision and elegant artistry within a range of maps, atlases and globes of supreme quality. We had a few surprises: for example, the fact that the atlas by Mercator - father of the atlas - bombed when it was first published. Who would have thought, from such an ignominious beginning...?
You were treated also to the now very well-known Klencke Atlas of 1660 being taken out of its case and looked at on a table. Not the sort of thing to take to read on a train, the Klencke has always been seen as one massive book, which of course it is. However it is really a 'composite' atlas: that is, a book made up of many previously published maps, especially for one purpose. The fact that these maps were all originally intended as wall maps says something of the huge over-the-top gesture made by Klencke when he presented it. Perhaps ironically, it is purely because of the fact these maps were bound up in a book that they have survive.
Early next week we shall be moving the atlas into the PACCAR gallery, which will be a photo opportunity in itself. But with all the photographs and coverage the atlas has had, I still do not think that anyone can properly appreciate its scale and conception until they've stood next to it. I've never been scared by a book before (not even Enid Blyton's Five go Down to the Sea), but the unnerving feeling of standing next to a book both bigger and heavier than oneself needs to be experienced by all. Opportunity to see it from next Friday.
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