UIowaMaps

This map of America, unlike many that would be published over the following centuries, features an attached California (and a rather lumpy South America). Notes in Latin describe explorations and features of the area.

This beautiful geographical work, published in several volumes, is a slightly later edition of Giovanni Lorenzo d'Anania’s most famous work, L’universale fabrica del mondo, ovvero cosmografia.

This beautiful geographical work, published in several volumes, is a slightly later edition of Giovanni Lorenzo d'Anania’s most famous work, L’universale fabrica del mondo, ovvero cosmografia. The maps are typical of the time in which they were produced, with plenty of lovely accents like the little sea monster pictured above, near Africa.

We’ll feature several of the maps from this book over the next couple of weeks.

As promised, here are some more of the spectacular maps from the collaborative Atlas project.

This wonderful collaborative project arrived this week through our own Emily Martin. All of the artists listed in the third photo contributed their own map to to the project, creating an atlas of the mind. The variety of folding techniques was one of the most fascinating aspects to me; the illustrations were another! Painted, pencilled, printed, drawn, no two are alike. I will post another set of them later this week.

One of Chef Louis’ interests relating to culinary history was the history of travel, so there are several travel guides in his collection. Here is a traveler’s guide to visiting the Netherlands, complete with maps of routes between Paris, London, and Amsterdam.

Istanbul (Not Constantinople).... wait. Yes, Constantinople!

The map of Asia Minor was long enough that I was not able to get a good photo of it. Snippets it is!

Maps of Rome as the inside covers of a book on Roman Gastronomy! These are fairly common as instructional elements in travel guides (and sometimes in works of fiction), but like the illustrations inside the pamphlet, are almost entirely decorative in this case.

We have a fairly extensive oenology collection within our Chef Louis Szathmary Collection in Special Collections. Here is one example in the form of some German vineyard maps! Most of the maps in this book are new, but the author featured a Delisle map at the beginning of the book.

Expect to see a few more Szathmary map posts this month.

Hello to our southerly neighbors!

This little pamphlet was sitting on a cart near me and merited further investigation. Although not initially very eye-catching, its message is intriguing. Like many Midwestern pamphlet maps at the time, it encouraged people to immigrate to the area. Such maps can also be found in other languages (Swedish, German, etc), indicating a desire to bring in foreign immigrants as well as those already in the States.

The Carte du Missouri in Perrin du Lac’s Voyage dans les deux Louisianes focuses on locating villages and on indicating rivers that intersect the Missouri river. The map ends where the Missouri runs into the Mississippi.

The mammoth skeleton really completes this one.

I got carried away with the photography on this one, especially considering that (yet again) most of these are more diagram than map, but hey! They’re really neat.

Kircher’s work is elaborately and beautifully illustrated, and well worth a more thorough look. You can see find more info and images here and here.

The final three images above are taken from one map (you can see the full map here), which was laid in to Report of the exploring expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the years 1843-44. The book details John C. Frémont’s first and second expeditions. It was published in 1845, the year Frémont went on his third expedition.

Frémont went on to briefly serve as Military Governor of California, make a fortune in the California Gold Rush, win a Senate appointment, run for president, and serve as Commander of the Department of the West in the Civil War (appointed by President Lincoln).