Alessandro Scafi's wonderfully illustrated, perceptive book  'Maps of Paradise' has just been published by the British Library, and is available in, amongst other places, the British Library shop.  I'm delighted to say that  Alessandro has written a blog post describing his engagement with this extraordinary subject, and its continuing relevance in the world:

 

Where is paradise? I have always been intrigued by paradise on maps. It all began when I was writing my BA thesis, in the late 1980s. I came across, again and again, the same cliché: medieval people were so prone to believing in monsters and marvels that they even located earthly paradise on a map. I felt the cliché needed to be replaced by knowledge. In my doctoral dissertation at the Warburg Institute, which I submitted in 1999, I investigated the notion of earthly paradise in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the fifteenth century. I also began to explore the history of the cartography of paradise, and I ended up writing a history of how the biblical Garden of Eden has been put on maps from the early Middle Ages to the present day.

 

World map from Beatus of Liebana, In Apocalypsin [Monastry of san Domingo de Silos, 1109] . British Library, Add.MS 11695.

During a long conceptual journey, I have encountered earthly paradise in a diversity of guises, fashioned from words on the page and lines on a map. Whether a medieval map maker, a Renaissance biblical scholar, or a Near East archaeologist was involved, what intrigued me most were the diverse ways in which scholars and mapmakers rose to the challenge of identifying the location of paradise on a map, despite being beyond human reach.

The 'Psalter' world map. London, c.1265.  British Library, Add.MS 28681.

The issue has been moulded and remoulded generation after generation and none of the “last words” on the location of paradise was ever effectively final. From the enduring debate over the location of paradise, however, I have learnt more about the people involved than about the issue itself. I have also found that modern historians have been far too quick to brand the products of a history of which they themselves are part as simple-minded and naïve. It is clear that profound human needs lie at the roots of all forms of the nostalgia for paradise. Humans long to be united in safety and peace. Each individual yearns to find a purpose that is higher than that defined by physical existence, and to be spared violence, injustice and social alienation.

The Garden of Eden, from Biblia, das ist, die gantze Heilige Schrifft Deudsch [Wittenberg: Hans Lufft, 1536] British Library, I.B.9

The maps of paradise that I studied celebrate the history of a paradox: the attempt to map the unmappable. At the same time  they also mirror a universal dream of perfection and happiness. All peoples share a nostalgia for a joy that was experienced at the beginning of everything, or else a yearning for a joy to be experienced at everything’s end. All civilizations have imagined a condition, a place, a time for paradise. These Maps of Paradise mirror the universal (and never forgotten) yearning to discover heaven on earth.


Jodocus Hondius, Paradisus, from Atlas Minor [Amsterdam: J. Hondius, 1607/10]. British Library, Maps C.3.a.3.

Athanasius Kircher, Topographia paradisi... from Arca Noe, 1675. British Library 460.c.9

Utopia Insulae Tabula from De optimo reip. statu deque noua insula Vtopia libellus ... Thomae Mori [Basle: J. Frobenium, 1518]. British Library G.2398.(1.) 

Alessandro Scafi

 Wall maps are sometimes depicted in the background of painted or printed portraits.  Almost always they are just a blur with a stroke of colour or a sign-like blot .  This is emphatically not the case in the portrait of Mildmay Fane , 2^nd Earl of Westmoreland (1602-65) engraved by Peter Williamson in 1662.

 The Efigies of the right Honnorable Mildmay Earl of Westmorland Baron Le Despencer & Burghergh and Knight of the Bath etc. BHEN (?)  invent. P. Williamson Sculp 1662.

Copper engraving. 260 x 203 mm.

 The Earl is depicted sitting in front of a wall map showing Lincolnshire and parts of Northamptonshire and  Nottinghamshire with rivers, roads and numerous placenames in microscopic lettering.   A compass rose at the top left suggests that the original was cut from a larger map of England and Wales but in fact the map – if it actually  existed – was probably a purpose-made manuscript. 

[detail showing the map]

Even taking into account that it is oriented to the  North-East, the geographical realities are slightly distorted,  there are blank spaces in the East even though the area is relatively densely populated. And it appears to show roads, which were not to be found on any known contemporary printed wall maps, notably the so-called Quartermaster-General’s Map, derived from Saxton’s wall map of 1583 and engraved by Wenceslas Hollar. 

A close study suggests that it dated from the time of the English Civil War, and probably from about 1646,  since it names ‘Col Rossiter’s House’, though Edward Rossiter of Somerby (1618-69) , a colonel in the parliamentary armies, had made his peace with Charles II and been knighted by 1662.  The Earl’s clothing also seems old-fashioned for the 1660s, suggesting that the painting from which the print was probably copied  was created in the 1650s. The selective depiction of the terrain suggest that the map commemorates a military campaign, such as that culminating in the siege of Newark in 1645-6. 

It seems unlikely though that in the wake of the restoration of Charles II in 1660, the Earl of Westmoreland would have wished to draw attention in the print to a royalist defeat. The map does however breathe strategy and local power politics.  Its most striking feature  are the names of great houses that are sprinkled across and including the Earl’s own seat of Apethorpe (recently restored by English Heritage and seeking a new owner),   the Earl of Exeter’s home at Burghley and  Tattershall and Grimthorpe  castles, then the homes of the earls of Lincoln and Lord Willoughby de Eresby respectively – as well as Col. Rossiter’s House. 

Regardless of whether or  not it represented a military campaign, it presents the framework of  power in that part of England during the Civil War as perceived by one of the actors at the time.  In this it resembles the tapestry maps created of the midland counties by various generations of the Sheldon family after 1580 and the  copies of Saxton’s county maps that were annotated with the names of justices of the peace by Lord Burghley between 1572 and 1598 by Lord Burghley, now in the British Library (Royal Ms 18.D.III).

It may well represent a type of map of which virtually no examples now survive, but which the nobility and gentry might have used to plot their marriage strategies and electoral campaigns.  Small though it is, it deserves further study – which is the reason why an example has just been purchased by the British Library.

Peter Barber

 

 

 

I'm pleased to welcome as our latest guest blogger Mel Byrd from the British Library's higher education team. Mel has been heavily involved with the 'Made with the British Library' video series, and has an interesting map case-study to introduce. 

'The Library recently launched a new series of videos, Made with the British Library, which tell the stories of some of the researchers that have been inspired by the Library’s collections. One of the videos caught my eye; it’s a fascinating example of how modern and historical mapping can be used in research.

Dr Diana Newall is an Associate Lecturer at the University of Kent. She’s an art historian, focusing on 15th century travel and Mediterranean studies, and she has published several books, including Art History: The Basics (2008). Diana began using the British Library during her PhD, when she was researching the Venetian period on Crete (in the 13th – 17th centuries), and the Cretan school of art created during that time. She became interested in Candia: the former capital of Crete, on the site of modern Heraklion. Candia was destroyed in the early 20th century and there is very little evidence of the old city.

 

Diana used the Library’s map collections to start to recreate the city: socially and topographically. She looked at 15th century maps of the region, as well as topographical maps created by British soldiers stationed on Crete in WWII. To understand what it was like to live in Candia at that time, Diana used a wide range of sources, including a first edition of one of the earliest illustrated travel books: a 15th century account of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, by Bernhard von Breydenbach. She was able to compare this with other works featuring Candia, to track the changing city – and its destruction. Using the Library's collections in this way gave crucial context to Diana's research and enabled her to recreate this lost city.'

 We’d love to hear about how the Library has inspired you, or about your discoveries in our collections. Write a comment below, or send us an email

 

Here is an aerial view of a small farm outside Bromyard in Herefordshire:

We’ve got used to expecting large scale aerial and satellite imagery of tiny rural areas ‘on tap’, which is remarkable in itself. These images correspond to what we imagine the English countryside to look like from that high up, from that particular angle.

For three days a year, these fields become Nozstock, a music and arts festival for 5,000 people, comprising 4,995 teenagers, plus me and my crew. For us the festival-goers, this small farm in Herefordshire actually looks more like this:

Image © 2013 Toki Allison/Laura Veronesi for Nozstock: The Hidden Valley

For a large number of people, the reality of these few acres is actually the map included on the centre pages of the programme. It’s a typical festival map, an ‘amateur’ (i.e. not by a trained cartographer) map, fashioned for the festival goer. It is stylish, bold and yet easy to read, compact.

Festival maps are part of the explorative festival experience,  discovery, and the anticipation of those discoveries. Maps and photographs in holiday brochures do a similar thing.

The map shows a temporary place, occurring annually, rather like the limits of Antarctic ice. I doubt many people (besides my friend Drummond, a 'retentive' chap who has collected and neatly preserved each of his 10 Glastonbury festival fold out maps) will have kept the map, but actually it is more permanent than the place it illustrates. The festival and its the temporary village of tents with muddy (thanks for that) walkways between them, will gradually fade away over the course of the year, before re-forming in a slightly different order.

And when Google update their satellite coverage of the UK, what happens to the superseded data? Some mapping is in fact remarkably temporary. Thank goodness, then, for map libraries.

I'm delighted to introduce this guest blog post by the historian Chet Van Duzer, who has just written a book on a very particular (and peculiar) aspect of early maps. Chet has clearly had a great time seeking out images of sea creatures in the British Library's early maps and atlases,  and has picked some of the best for us here.  Many of the monsters are not so much scary as whimsical (he says, with feet firmly on dry land ...)

While researching and writing Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps, just published by the British Library, one of the things I discovered is that cartographers generally used the most recent authoritative sources available to them for the sea monsters on their maps. This tendency may be seen for example in the world map in a 13th-century manuscript of Beatus of Liébana’s Commentary on the Apocalypse, where the location of the starfish in the western ocean probably derives from Thomas of Cantimpré’s encyclopedia finished a few years earlier; it is also clear in Gerard Mercator’s famous world map of 1569, where most of the sea monsters come from Pierre Belon’s De aquatilibus libri duo, published in 1553.

This result is surprising, as we tend to think of the sea monsters on medieval maps as being whimsical creations, things dreamed up by the cartographer in moments of fancy. Despite cartographers’ general tendency to use scientific sources for their sea monsters, there are cases in which the mapmakers did simply invent creatures, and those monsters can be delightfully whimsical. There seems to have been a fashion for fanciful sea monsters around the middle of the 16th century, and in these cases we are to recognise a change in the function of the monsters on maps, at least in the eyes of their painters: sea monsters have gone from having both scientific and decorative functions (showing what was thought to live in the sea, and making the maps more lively and appealing), to having a purely decorative function.

Some examples of whimsical sea monsters from the second half of the 16th century:

A winged sea dragon with huge rabbit ears on Gastaldi’s Cosmographia Universalis et Exactissima iuxta postremam neotericorum traditio[n]em of c. 1561 (British Library Maps C.18.n.1)

An ichthyocentaur playing a viol on the map of Scandinavia in Ortelius’s Theatrum orbis terrarum (Antwerp, 1571) (British Library Maps C.2.c.5, map 45)

 

A one-eyed sea monster on the map of Cornwall in the Burghley-Saxton atlas, which comprises proofs of Christopher Saxton’s maps of the counties of England and Wales (c. 1579) (in British Library Royal MS 18.D.III)

 

A whimsical sea monster with a cactus-like rump in Tommaso Porcacchi, L’Isole piu famose del mondo (Venice, 1572), p. 16 (British Library Maps 48.d.63, now Maps C.7.b.19)

 

A sea elephant with an impressive array of spikes jutting from its back in Tommaso Porcacchi, L’Isole piu famose del mondo (Venice, 1572), p. 101 (British Library Maps 48.d.63, now Maps C.7.b.19)

 

A bird-headed sea monster and a human-headed sea serpent on a nautical chart made by Antonio Millo in 1582 (British Library Add. MS 27470)

The aquatic unicorn in Cornelis de Jode’s Speculum Orbis Terrae (Antwerp, 1593) (British Library Maps C.7.c.13, on the map titled Quivirae Regnum cum alijs versus Boream)

Chet Van Duzer

Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps is available from all good bookshops -  such as this one.  

 

I'm delighted to introduce this guest blog post from British Library conservator Ann Tomalak. Maps, like all works on paper, are potentially fragile, but larger-than A4 size and unprotected by the covers of a book, sheet maps are particularly vulnerable to wear and quite literally tear.  The map doctor writes:

Many people take maps on their travels, but a new initiative at the British Library has conservators travelling to bring their skills to our map collections. The aim is to streamline the process of running repairs, so as to get items back into use as quickly as possible.

We have been trialling a conservation trolley, a self-contained work station filled with tools and all the most commonly used repair materials. This can be moved to any part of the building where it is needed (but generally close to collection storage areas) and remain there for a few days or weeks. The Map Library was chosen as the first area that might benefit from the new system.

Above: The board folder containing this rare map on parchment [Herman Moll's two-sheet world map of 1707] had become damaged, putting the item at risk. The conservator was able to re-use the existing hinge to secure the map in a new folder. 

Traditionally, damaged items are withdrawn from use. They must be assessed and an estimate prepared, then they are ordered and delivered to the conservation studios in the British Library Centre for Conservation and slotted into the work-flow. While there, they are thoroughly checked. The damage is photographed and information about each item and its treatment is recorded on a database. This is all very well for material that needs intensive treatment, but many items have low level damage, merely wear and tear. A simple repair might take just 15 minutes, but the ancillary tasks take several hours. Meanwhile, non-priority items get pushed further down the list and can be unavailable for many months.

[This map is a little bit poorly - TH]

With the new system, the conservator uses a kind of triage on damaged items. A few will not need treatment and can be returned to use immediately. This category includes recently acquired items that just need a condition check, but also damage that can safely be left, as it will not get worse.  For example, parchment sometimes starts to cockle if it is taken too quickly from a cool storage area to the warmer Reading Room, but we know it will relax again naturally back in the store.

Previously used maps may be bundled together in storage before coming to the British Library.  This results in crumpling, folds and tears.

The second category consists of items that either need lengthy and intensive conservation, or their treatment requires specialist equipment only available in the conservation studios.  These can quickly be separated out and will eventually be delivered to the Centrer for Conservation in the old way.

A small nick at the edge can quickly develop into a longer tear right across the image which is much more difficult to repair invisibly, so it is important to catch minor damage quickly.

This leaves the items that can be repaired at the conservation trolley. For maps, the majority have tears, damaged corners, are splitting along folds or are crumpled and creased. If they were to continue in use, this damage would get worse and eventually require major conservation, but if we catch it early a quick and simple repair is sufficient. All interventions are recorded, but on a very simple spread-sheet that simply identifies the item, says what was done to it and what materials were used. Rather than describe the damage in detail, we photograph it. Additional notes can be added if necessary.

Oversized material that has been bound often has distinctive edge damage where it has protruded from the text block.

The trial in the Maps Library went very well. Over a fortnight, 43 items were completed and a number more set aside for full conservation. We were able to identify further tools and materials to carry on the trolley; some, such as task lighting, that will be useful in all collection areas and some specific to maps, like oversized boards and blotting paper for pressing large items, plus a stash of heavier weights. By actually testing the system we discovered minor problems (the amount of drying space needed when several items are being worked on each day, and the nearest place to wash paste brushes) and are well on our way to refinements that will make the conservator’s task easier. 

Fit for use again: the corner of this map [Philip Lea's map of Kent, dated 1730] had been torn off and was reattached at the conservation trolley.

The trolley has now moved on, first to Western Manuscripts and then to Print History to continue the trial. But one thing is for sure. The conservation trolley will be back in the Map Library!

Around this time of year, Dr Adam Smyth provides me with the theme for the annual Birkbeck College medieval and early modern history summer school.

The British Library's excellent map collection (still relatively unplumbed by students of early modern history) is usually able to yield a few appropriate maps to discuss.  Last year’s topic In the City wasn’t too taxing (we've one or two urban maps lying around), and this year too the theme On the River was generous.

Rivers are some of the most prominent features on maps of all ages. In fact in some cases, rivers are the only features. From this we must infer that rivers are important.

A river – the River Don – forms the division between Europe and Asia in schematic T-in-O world diagram maps from the 7th century:

[TO diagram from Etymologies] Augsburg: Gunther Zainer, 1472. woodblock. British Library IB.5441

A collection of rivers traditionally run from the Garden of Eden at the top of more embellished medieval world maps:

The Ramsey Abbey map, around 1350. From 'Polychronicon.' British Library Royal MS 14.C.IX, ff. 1v-2.

More down-to-earth water descriptions are very rare. This  diagram describes – or rather commemorates, the construction of a 3 mile water course transporting water from springs (the circles) in Hertfordshire to Waltham Abbey. In around 1350.

 

[A plan of springs in Wormley, Hertfordshire], MS, around 1350. British Library, Harley MS 391, ff. 5v-6.

Over the course of the early modern period, as the world gets bigger and maps become a more common method of communicating, rivers seem to become less of a barrier (physical and mental) and more a means to expansion.

The river leading to the vulnerable heart of Britain.This defensive plan for the Thames was compiled under threat of invasion from Spain in 1588:

Robert Adams, Thamesis Descriptio. 1588. British Library Maps K.Top 6.17

This map of the River Trent was apparently produced to show that the artificial diversion of the river away from Newark’s mills (by a certain sneaky Mr Sutton) did not compromise their productivity:

[A [Map of mills on the River Trent], MS, c. 1558. British Library Cotton MS Augustus I.i.65

Diplomatic missions to the east (this by the Holstein court in the 1630s) produced fantastical travel accounts:

Adam Olearius, La cours de la riviere de Wolga, from The Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors sent by Frederick Duke of Holstein, to the Great Duke of Muscovy… Copper engraving. London : T. Dring & J. Starkey, 1662. British Library 983.f.1.

In Michael Drayton’s... how can I put it... 'inventive' topographical poem ‘Poly Olbion,’ the rivers of England and Wales have a singing match. The prize? The Isle of Lundy. Great!

William Hole, [A map of the river Severn] from Michael Drayton, Poly Olbion / A chorographicall description… copper engraving. London: Printed for J. Marriott, J. Grismond, and T. Dewe, 1622. British Library 838.m.1

It's all about the rivers, obviously. Lyon, at the confluence of the rivers Saône and Rhone, was a powerful mercantile town, financial centre and meeting point from at least the Middle Ages:

Francois Demasso, Description au naturel de la Ville de Lyon…(detail). Lyons, 1659. Copper engraving. British Library Maps K.Top.68.5.2 TAB

These are all highly vaunted visions of the river, but of course we should remember that most people would have had direct experience of rivers, and wouldn’t really have needed or used maps of them. Rarely do maps show the view from the river. 

But occasionally there's a cheeky glimpse of the sort of everyday experience of the river which comes close enough. How big?

Claesz Jansz. Visscher, Brabantia...(detail), from Belgium sive Germania Inferior, continens Provincias singulares Septemdecim… Amsterdam, 1635. British Library Maps C.28.d.8

I was thumbing through some old Map Library invoices the other day in order to answer a reader enquiry about the provenance of a map we purchased, back in those heady days of 1891.

The quantity of invoices from the 1890s shows that the Map Library (formed in 1867) was extremely active in purchasing material from the map and book trade. Not just modern, up to date mapping, but historical mapping too, as the invoices show. An Ortelius atlas here (1570), a Hondius atlas there (1638), interspersed among then 'modern’ multi-sheet large scale sheet maps.

It is a really important period, because not only was the discipline of geography then developing into the modern academic university subject we recognise today, but old maps (as opposed to contemporary maps of 'classical geography') were becoming recognised as having value as historical sources.

I know the maps on this invoice very well. Dated 20th January, 1891, it lists a number of Dutch 17th century sea charts, including one by Willem Blaeu of 1625, printed onto vellum (Maps S.T.7.), and another map of 1784 which we included in the Magnificent Maps exhibition back in 2010. This is Buell's map of the USA, in fact the first map of the independent USA, and the first produced by somebody from the USA. There are still only seven known copies in the world.

 

Abel Buell, A New and correct Map of the United States of North America... [New Haven, 1784] British Library Maps *71490.(150.). 

It was purchased from a Dutch dealer called Frederick Muller. Muller was also a scholar, an author, a map enthusiast, and thus an important figure in the development of the history of cartography (see Harley, History of Cartography vol. I , chapter 1,  pp. 15-17). A descendant of Muller's is in the same business today. I saw their stand at the London Antiquarian Book Fair last week, along with a great many other antiquarian and rare book and print sellers. London is traditionally buzzing in June. A week earlier, the London Map Fair had taken place at that most venerable institution the Royal Geographical Society (which, let us not forget, has its own historical and integral collection of maps and views).

You may have heard the organiser of the map fair Tim Bryars, a historian in his own right, speaking about maps on the Today programme and Robert Elms show last week. Also at the fair, head of Cartographic & Topographical Materials our own Peter Barber gave a lecture on the ‘Cartomania of George III,’ describing our fundraising project for the digitisation and full cataloguing of the King’s Topographical Collection. And as well as the projects, possibilities and enthused map chat, there was even a purchase or two for the national map collection.