Author: lbang

La Florida / Peruviae Auriferae Regionis Typus / Guastecan

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This map is actually a collection of three maps that formed a part of the famous atlas that Abraham Ortelius, a Flemish mapmaker, made in the 16th Century. It actually includes three sections: one a part of the connecting tissue between the two continents of North and South America; one showing Florida; and one showing the Peruvian coast. Ortelius was one of the most decent mapmakers and collectors of maps. When he published his atlas, unlike many others who simply stole the ideas or the maps from someone else and attributed them to themselves, Ortelius always gave credit to the actual mapmaker. I particularly like the Peruvian coast, and, if you look at that, you’ll see the mountain ranges, of course the mountainous western coast of South America is famous. And this map would have been very useful to the Spanish as they continued their exploration and conquest of the South America and Central American portions of the Western Hemisphere. It’s also illustrated with some wonderful ships at sea, and communities that probably did not have anything very substantial in them are represented by little castles and somewhat larger structures than are real at various points in the mountainous Peruvian coast.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1691629

Des Nouvelles Isles, comment, quand & par qui elles ont este trouvees

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This map is a page from a compilation of maps by our friend Sebastian Munster, the 16th-century cartographer. In this particular case, it is a French edition, Des Nouvelles Isles, the new islands, and it represents not a very real portrayal of the Caribbean islands but an impressionistic sense that there were lots of new islands that are now entering into the mind of the European explorer, and without trying to be accurate, I think Munster just throws a whole bunch of interesting Island-looking places together, together with a couple of ships, and this is the headline for what will be his more careful rendering of various islands in the Caribbean.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1691622

Battle of Santo Domingo on Hispaniola

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This map is a map of the then-settlement of Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola. And one can see the fairly orderly center of the town, surrounded by various gardens and other human activity. One of the features that I like particularly is this nondescript sea monster, looks a little bit more like a salamander. A giant salamander, as big as any of the ships in the fleet, swimming alongside, heading toward the fleet. This is a good example of the woodcut technique and a very early 16th-century map of that settlement.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1691610

Atlantic Ocean floor

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This map is a map very much in our own era. In a collection of antique maps, it is kind of the contrast, if you will, that is useful to make when looking at the maps of three, four hundred years before. I particularly like this map because it essentially accentuates the ocean floor of the Atlantic – something that was clearly not known to the mapmakers of the fifteen and sixteen hundreds. And it is a wonderful map to show the cleavages in the ocean floor as the continental plates are shifting, moving apart from one another here and forcing themselves together there. A great colorful work by the National Geographic Magazine, which in many ways was the state of cartography for 50 years in the middle of the 20th Century.

 

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Title: Atlantic Ocean floor

Contributor: National Geographic Society (U.S.). Cartographic Division

Call Number: SMITH I-28

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1691590

Spagnola

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This map is a very early 16th-century rendering of the island of Hispaniola. It’s a little misleading because a discussion of Jamaica appears at the bottom that would continue on to the next page where the map of Jamaica would appear. But this is Hispaniola, and you’ll see an effort to render a town on the island called Isabella. Bordon was operating with very little information here, and so one can’t really see very much of the actual outline of the island of Hispaniola, which of course now includes Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Nevertheless, here again was an early, early mapmaker doing his best and creating what is at least a very interesting rendering.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1691613

Engraving of Sebastian Münster

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This is an engraving of a mapmaker. The mapmaker is the well-known mapmaker of the 16th century called Sebastian Münster. We don’t know exactly who engraved this portrait of Münster, but in the course of the rest of the collection at Villanova University’s Falvey Library there will be many, many wood-cut maps, early maps, famous maps, performed by this mapmaker. He was born and lived his life largely in what is now Germany, and his work was pioneering work, copied by many in the years that followed.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1691614

A map of Pennsylvania exhibiting not only the improved parts of that Province, but also its extensive frontiers

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This very large and wonderful map is a map of Pennsylvania that was made in approximately 1770, before our Declaration of Independence and before our Constitution, but the colony of Pennsylvania was well established at that point, and the surveyor-mapmaker, Scull, in this case, has done an extraordinary job in rendering the colony in its then-glory. There is so much here that one could spend an hour-and-a-half just pointing to this part or that part, but some of the things that stand out are that it is really a snapshot. It is a freeze-frame of what Pennsylvania looked like at the time. In the lower right-hand corner, in the area where the red patch appears, that’s the street plan of Philadelphia. One sees all manner of locations, streams, uh, historic spots, etc. And then as one moves more to the center and to the left, not surprisingly, the amount of detail starts to disappear. In the very left-hand-most part where the two rivers that form the Ohio come together at what is now Pittsburgh, one sees the indication that that was the location of Fort Pitt, formerly Fort Duquesne – of course “Duquesne” was the name when the French dominated that section. Pitt when the British later took that part over. There’s vast empty spaces on the left-hand side of the map because, to a large degree, colonists, explorers just hadn’t gotten that far, hadn’t gotten to find all the wonderful detail that one might find today.

Unfortunately, the map of the colony is not complete because we don’t see Lake Erie in the upper left-hand corner. But, again, if we go back over to the right, up in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, we see reference to the Pocono Mountains. We see reference to the “Endless Mountains” up toward Wyalusing. There is a reference here to the “Great Swamp.” And, of course, as one goes back down south toward Philadelphia tracing the route of the Delaware River, one gets back into the part of the world that we are familiar with here in southeastern Pennsylvania. There is a reference here to Radnor, and, of course, we are here in Radnor Township. There’s a reference to Lower Merion, and there are a number of historic spots that are picked up by this methodical and wonderful mapmaker. One could spend, literally, hours and hours enjoying all of the many facets that are backed up by Mr. Scull. A wonderful map. An extraordinary map.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1691581

One world

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This map is not really so much a map as it is three views from space of our beautiful and somewhat endangered planet. In each of the views – and they’re side-by-side – there is a slight turning of the globe so that one sees a different part. This map or this spectacular view of the Earth from three different vantage points was produced by a company called Raven Maps. Raven Maps in the last twenty years or so has made some of the most sumptuous, colorful, and beautifully-rendered maps. This one, again, not really a map, but three views of the Earth is a beneficiary, of course, of the fact that we now have the ability to look back at our planet from space and see it through entirely new eyes.

 

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Title: One world

Contributors: Allan Cartography (Firm), Raven Maps & Images, Stuart Allan, Karin Kunkel

Call Number: SMITH I-32

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1691582

Japanese Mainland

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It’s a map in the middle of the 19th Century – published in 1865 – of the Japanese Mailan—Mainland. Now, on any current map of that part of the world, you will see the several islands of the Japanese archipelago arranged as they actually are, and they are certainly not in a straight line. However, for the purposes of this map, they’ve been made to fit in a straight line; so that the directions that might apply to one portion of the map don’t necessarily apply to another part of the map. From a visual standpoint, it’s gorgeous. It folds up and then folds back out. It’s very delicate. And to look at it and to try to connect one portion of the mapped area and today’s name for the city or body of water is a wonderful exercise.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1688784

The planet Earth

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This item is not so much a “map” as it is a view from space at our “ocean planet,” as it refers. Floating off to the left is a somewhat-diminished picture of the Moon. Again, this is an image that has been made possible by the remarkable exploration that we’ve been able to make of near space and our ability now to turn the cameras in our satellites back on ourselves so we can see this extraordinary planet that we live on. Clouds swirl. Green spaces predominate here and brown spaces there. One sees where the mountains are. One sees even what looks like a cyclone just off the  western coast of Mexico. It really causes one to reflect on the fact that there we are, lost in a black void, a lonely blue planet travelling through the Solar System.

 

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Title: The planet Earth : a digital portrait of our ocean planet

Contributors: Spaceshots Inc., Laboratory for Atmospheres (Goddard Space Flight Center)

Call Number: SMITH I-27

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1691571