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The Techniques of Atlas Making
- By The Map Collector
- Published 1 March 1982
- Maps
- Unrated
The Map Collector
The Map Collector, initiated by Peter Scott and Valerie G. Newby, was a journal on historical cartography published every quarter. The first issue appeared in 1997 and continued for nearly 20 years. After 74 issues the last copy appeared in Spring 1996. Mrs. Valerie G. Newby, is presently editor of the IMCoS Journal.
www.imcos.org
by David Woodward
In this article, David Woodward, who is Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin, USA, discusses every aspect of the 'atlas' from its history and definition to its technical make up. He also includes a glossary of terms often encountered in atlas descriptions which should prove useful to scholars and collectors alike.
‘I HATE DEFINITIONS', said Benjamin Disraeli, and when it comes to defining atlases, most of us would agree with him. Compilers of atlas bibliographies, faced with the question in a practical sense, are certainly not agreed on the matter. Philip Lee Phillips, compiler of the well-known List of Geographical Atlases in the Library of Congress, chose the broad view that included for example, topographical works consisting mostly of text, such as the works of Cornelius Wytfliet, Joannes DeLaet, but not the cosmographies of Johannes Honter or Sebastian Munster. On the other hand, Professor C. Koeman, in Atlantes Neerlandici, the standard bibliography of Dutch atlases, stated that a work is not entitled to the name 'atlas' by the mere fact that it contains maps. Geographical works, journals, topographical descriptions, chronicles, works with topographical drawings, and the like have been categorically omitted.' But he was quick to point out that `since the great tradition of atlas-making, originating from Abraham Ortelius' Theatrum orbis terrarum, permits text into a book of maps, I have allowed a rather large quantity of text in a book with maps before disqualifying it as an 'atlas', but itineraries, such works as Guicciardini's `Description of the Netherlands,' topographical descriptions and the like are excluded.'
While it would be easy to slip into discussions about whether an atlas should be manuscript or printed, how much text should be allowed, and so on, it makes more sense to agree with the official definition in the Multilingual Dictionary of Technical Terms in Cartography: an atlas is `a collection of maps designed to be kept (bound or loose) in a volume.'
The name `Atlas' appears to have been first used by Gerardus Mercator in the title of his 1595 Atlas, sive Cosmographiae meditationes de fabrica Mundi et fabricata figura (Atlas, or meditation of the cosmographer on the creation of the world and the shape of all created things). It is clear from Mercator's preface to this atlas and from the figure on the title page that the work was named, not after the famous Titan bearing the Heavens on his shoulders, but after a mythical astronomer-king of Libya, who is fabled to have made the first celestial globe. It therefore appears that designers of the title pages of later editions of Mercator's atlas and other atlases were confused in representing Atlas iconographically as the Titan. The representation of the Titan upholding the heavens on the title page of Antonio Lafreri's atlas, published some twenty years before Mercator's, would appear to be coincidental to the whole question.
The Format of Atlases
The act of binding a number of maps together into an atlas is not of itself particularly exciting or innovative. The convenience of the bound volume was discovered early and still survives. Bibliographers recognize that this format had been introduced at least by the first century All, at a time when parchment was supplanting papyrus as a writing material.
While the concept of a published set of maps with a title page and table of contents indicating a standard package is difficult to ascribe to any one individual, the first such publication to appear was the Theatrum Orbis Terrartun of Abraham Ortelius in May 1570. The work clearly demonstrates a desire on the author's part to provide not a miscellaneous collection of maps, but a conspectus of material engraved according to common format and style. In many respects, the Theatrum differs from earlier efforts by Paolo Forlani, Giovanni Francesco C:amocio, and the Bertellis, (Ferrando and Donato) in Venice, who were known to issue collections of maps bound to order, without title pages or printed tables of contents. The title page ascribed to Antonio Lafreri, Geografia. Tacole Moderne di Geugrgfia ... apparently intended to be placed before collections of maps sold in his establishment in Rome, is variously dated 1570-75, with a second state, containing the imprint of Petrus de' Nobilibus, dated around 1590.
We may draw a distinction between an atlas that has been uniquely made to order for a client, and one that has been issued in a standard identifiable edition for general circulation. It is difficult to regard any edition of an early atlas as standard, citing frequent minor variations in one plate or another. But there is a substantial difference between an atlas that has a printed title page, table of contents, page numbers and index, to one that is simply a collection of traps of different sizes and shapes bound together by the publisher or by the client's bookseller or binder. The latter publication is known bibliographically as a nonce book and we can use the term atlas Jactice in this special context.
One indication of the difficulty of publishing an atlas with standard contents is seen in the various methods of pagination that atlas publishers have used. Sometimes the page numbers are printed as an integral part of the book, the map numbers may be engraved on the original map plates. At other times, page or map numbers were added in manuscript, printed on small paper labels and attached to the maps, or added with a type stamp.
Although binding is implied in the atlas format, the form of this may not necessarily be the traditional sewn binding. Atlases have been frequently issued in portfolios in loose-leaf format. Sometimes the maps were issued as unbound sheets in a series — one such attempt was in Sidney E. Morse's Cerographic Atlas of the United States (1842-1845) in parts as supplements to the New York Observer, of which he was editor.
Read Full Article >>
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COPYRIGHT March 1982 The Map Collector, All rights reserved.
No portion of this article nor the accompanying illustrations can or may be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
In this article, David Woodward, who is Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin, USA, discusses every aspect of the 'atlas' from its history and definition to its technical make up. He also includes a glossary of terms often encountered in atlas descriptions which should prove useful to scholars and collectors alike.
‘I HATE DEFINITIONS', said Benjamin Disraeli, and when it comes to defining atlases, most of us would agree with him. Compilers of atlas bibliographies, faced with the question in a practical sense, are certainly not agreed on the matter. Philip Lee Phillips, compiler of the well-known List of Geographical Atlases in the Library of Congress, chose the broad view that included for example, topographical works consisting mostly of text, such as the works of Cornelius Wytfliet, Joannes DeLaet, but not the cosmographies of Johannes Honter or Sebastian Munster. On the other hand, Professor C. Koeman, in Atlantes Neerlandici, the standard bibliography of Dutch atlases, stated that a work is not entitled to the name 'atlas' by the mere fact that it contains maps. Geographical works, journals, topographical descriptions, chronicles, works with topographical drawings, and the like have been categorically omitted.' But he was quick to point out that `since the great tradition of atlas-making, originating from Abraham Ortelius' Theatrum orbis terrarum, permits text into a book of maps, I have allowed a rather large quantity of text in a book with maps before disqualifying it as an 'atlas', but itineraries, such works as Guicciardini's `Description of the Netherlands,' topographical descriptions and the like are excluded.'
While it would be easy to slip into discussions about whether an atlas should be manuscript or printed, how much text should be allowed, and so on, it makes more sense to agree with the official definition in the Multilingual Dictionary of Technical Terms in Cartography: an atlas is `a collection of maps designed to be kept (bound or loose) in a volume.'
The name `Atlas' appears to have been first used by Gerardus Mercator in the title of his 1595 Atlas, sive Cosmographiae meditationes de fabrica Mundi et fabricata figura (Atlas, or meditation of the cosmographer on the creation of the world and the shape of all created things). It is clear from Mercator's preface to this atlas and from the figure on the title page that the work was named, not after the famous Titan bearing the Heavens on his shoulders, but after a mythical astronomer-king of Libya, who is fabled to have made the first celestial globe. It therefore appears that designers of the title pages of later editions of Mercator's atlas and other atlases were confused in representing Atlas iconographically as the Titan. The representation of the Titan upholding the heavens on the title page of Antonio Lafreri's atlas, published some twenty years before Mercator's, would appear to be coincidental to the whole question.
The Format of Atlases
The act of binding a number of maps together into an atlas is not of itself particularly exciting or innovative. The convenience of the bound volume was discovered early and still survives. Bibliographers recognize that this format had been introduced at least by the first century All, at a time when parchment was supplanting papyrus as a writing material.
While the concept of a published set of maps with a title page and table of contents indicating a standard package is difficult to ascribe to any one individual, the first such publication to appear was the Theatrum Orbis Terrartun of Abraham Ortelius in May 1570. The work clearly demonstrates a desire on the author's part to provide not a miscellaneous collection of maps, but a conspectus of material engraved according to common format and style. In many respects, the Theatrum differs from earlier efforts by Paolo Forlani, Giovanni Francesco C:amocio, and the Bertellis, (Ferrando and Donato) in Venice, who were known to issue collections of maps bound to order, without title pages or printed tables of contents. The title page ascribed to Antonio Lafreri, Geografia. Tacole Moderne di Geugrgfia ... apparently intended to be placed before collections of maps sold in his establishment in Rome, is variously dated 1570-75, with a second state, containing the imprint of Petrus de' Nobilibus, dated around 1590.
We may draw a distinction between an atlas that has been uniquely made to order for a client, and one that has been issued in a standard identifiable edition for general circulation. It is difficult to regard any edition of an early atlas as standard, citing frequent minor variations in one plate or another. But there is a substantial difference between an atlas that has a printed title page, table of contents, page numbers and index, to one that is simply a collection of traps of different sizes and shapes bound together by the publisher or by the client's bookseller or binder. The latter publication is known bibliographically as a nonce book and we can use the term atlas Jactice in this special context.
One indication of the difficulty of publishing an atlas with standard contents is seen in the various methods of pagination that atlas publishers have used. Sometimes the page numbers are printed as an integral part of the book, the map numbers may be engraved on the original map plates. At other times, page or map numbers were added in manuscript, printed on small paper labels and attached to the maps, or added with a type stamp.
Although binding is implied in the atlas format, the form of this may not necessarily be the traditional sewn binding. Atlases have been frequently issued in portfolios in loose-leaf format. Sometimes the maps were issued as unbound sheets in a series — one such attempt was in Sidney E. Morse's Cerographic Atlas of the United States (1842-1845) in parts as supplements to the New York Observer, of which he was editor.
Read Full Article >>
[Acrobat Reader required]
COPYRIGHT March 1982 The Map Collector, All rights reserved.
No portion of this article nor the accompanying illustrations can or may be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
