MOST OF US think of maps as printed sheets of paper. The great majority of maps are indeed reproduced in this way, and paper or vellum has been the natural preferred material first for manuscript maps and then for nearly all printed representations of the earth's surface. There are however a host of interesting maps in alternative materials, sometimes in forms which have a distinct and separate functional use. Among these are tables of silver, glass or wood, coffers and cabinets, floor mosaics, wall coverings and doors, tapestries and screens, ewers and caskets, and dishes or plates of fired porcelain.

The 'Gyōgi'-type map of Japan, little changed since the eighth-century, appeared as decoration on many Japanese objects from screens to saké cups. The map is on a dish in the author's collection. An inscription dates it to the Tempo period (1830-43). (Photo by John Webb).

Smaller items include powder horns, paper weights, fans and netsuki: even every-day utility objects such as letter openers, pencil sharpeners and ash trays. These 'cartographical curiosities' now form a collecting field all of their own, with dealers starting to cater for a growing demand. This short article covers just one such item: a superb plate of blue and white porcelain on which is embossed an early representation of Japan. The vivid contrast of the azure blue against the pure white background cannot be appreciated in a black and white photograph; nor is the relatively large size of the plate — 18 inches or 46 centimetres in diameter — obvious.

A more detailed Gyōgi-type map with a table of distances is carved on this nineteenth-century ivory netsuki. [A netsuki is a small piece of ivory, carved or decorated, worn by the Japanese as a bob or button], (By courtesy of The British Museum).

The author bought this plate twelve months ago but has not located others like it among the usual sources in the British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, map shops, or traditional dealers in Japanese porcelain. Nevertheless, such plates are not unknown and are part of a tradition of Japanese ceramic art dating from the mid-eighteenth century. Laurence Smith, one-time Keeper of the Department of Oriental Antiquities in the British Museum, writing in 1973 and noting the existence of Japanese map plates referred to '... the quantities which appear these days in London'.

On the reverse of my plate is an inscription in Japanese which reads Honcho Tempo Nen Sei or, in translation, 'Made in Japan in the Tempo era'. The Tempo era was from 1830 to 1843, one of the periods in the broad Tokugawa or Edo epoch spanning the end of the Ming dynasty in 1603 up to the Meiji Restoration in 1867. The same inscription 'Made in ... the Tempo Era' is known to have been applied to some pieces of porcelain produced after 1843, but Smith concludes that those articles which are later are probably not as late as the Meiji reign.

Moulded in low relief on the surface of the map plate is a map of Japan and adjacent islands. There is a circular compass diagram with twelve cardinal sections and, at the bottom, a rectangular tablet describing those provinces that do not have a seaboard. All the islands are named, and the three largest — Kyushu, Shikoku, and Honshu — are divided into local provinces, also named. The surrounding sea is composed of scallop-like wavelets, not at all dissimilar to the sea pattern used for the maps in first printed edition of Ptolemy's Geographia from Bologna in 1477, and in a few other early European maps. Around the circumference of the map plate are parts of other lands, primarily based on Japanese mythology. To the north is Shojin Koku, or the land of dwarfs, and to the south is Nyogo Koku: a land apparently inhabited only by women.

What is immediately noticeable is that the outline includes only three out of the four principal islands of Japan. The northern island of Hokkaido is missing, nor is it designated around the borders. The orientation is also curious. The absence of any eastern angular twist means that the main island of Honshu lies almost due east-west. The odd hammer-shape to the right (east) is perhaps a misplacing of the northern provinces of Honshu, in the same way that the Ptolemaic map of the British Isles turns Scotland so that it is at right-angles to England.

Nineteenth-century Gyōgi-type maps are not representative of contemporary Japanese map-making. Nagakubo Sekisui's map of 1779 broke with the decorative tradition and established a new prototype. (By courtesy of the British Library).