#creative cartography

[victusinveritas]

[victusinveritas]

[victusinveritas]

The Australo-Hungarian Empire at Its Greatest Extent.

Three words: Hungarian kangaroo cavalry.

A whole different Waltzing Matilda.

Emperor Frank Bruce II.

That's all I've got, but it's late and I'm tired.

[here-now-this]

"What a rude Lump our World is that we are so apt to dote upon." —Thomas Burnet, 17th century British theologician, early creative cartographer.

Once upon a time (and in the beginning), Thomas said, the world was smooth and pure and perfect. This waterless map is the world Post Flood, drained so you can see more clearly what a terrible mess we made of things. 

I quite love our lumpish earth, with water added, of course. All those ragged mountains for climbing, all those oceans spangling out. All of us capable of loving it back to health, if we want, if we choose.

http://io9.com/a-17th-century-map-depicts-a-world-with-the-oceans-drai-1584775623

[francescajblog]

The map shows a geography entirely based around the theme of love according to the Précieuses of that era.

'The way through this pastoral country of the affections begins at Nouvelle Amitié and leads (ignoring dead-ends such as the Lake of Indifference) by three alternative routes to either Tendre-sur-Reconnaissance, Tendre-sur-Inclination, or Tendre-sur-Estime.

On the map the river of Inclination flows directly to Tendre-sur-Inclination, showing mutual affection as the shortest way to love. Unsuccessful suitors, however, have to find their way to love ("Tendre") through two possible routes. One leads through the villages of "Billet Doux" (Love Letter), "Petits Soins" (Little Trinkets) and so forth and ends at "Tendre-sur-Estime", the suitor having successfully convinced the lady of his worth. The other route leads to "Tendre-sur-Reconnaissance", the names of the villages showing how patience, faithfulness, and constant attention will eventually soften a lady's heart.

Straying from those routes is not recommended, as one might fall into the "lake of Indifference".

Passion by contrast was left on the fringes, where 'lies La Mer Dangereuse, rocky but otherwise uncharted, and beyond that again are Terres Inconnues '

'The enormously popular and much imitated Carte de Tendre...became a symbol for the politically and culturally independent, aristocraticsalonnières '.

From a later, feminist perspective, 'in this geography of sentiment the personal is indeed political...placing the female prerogative at the center of civilization' by privileging 'the private amorous contract contingent on woman's inclination'.

[micaelacolleenbarrett]

Gorgeous anatomy! 

 Adam Dant‘s map which describes a journey through London as if through the human digestive tract from the mouth in Whitehall to the rectum in Whitechapel. Adam has taken liberties with anatomy to place the brain in Westminster, the liver in Fleet St, the heart at St Paul’s, the stomach in the City and the genitals in the East End. Yet it all serves to illustrate his notion that “London is akin to a voracious and hungry organism with the Thames running through it as a peristaltic gut continually in motion.”

[vanessaberry]

Map of King Street, Newtown, in the 1990s.