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| The A-Z of wonderful works of
art |
The map can be much more than just a way
of planning your route – it is also a thing of beauty, writes
Dan Carrier
The Map Book by Peter Barber
Orion, £25
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The Court Game of Geography, a pack of cards from 1827
A detailed map of the Pacific by Venetian map-maker Vincenzo
Coronelli in 1688
Peter Barber
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YOU may think a map is something to fish out of your car’s
glove compartment when you are looking to find out how to get from
A to B.
A popular misconception, according to Peter Barber, the head of
maps at the British Library, who has recently produced a colourful
guide to the history of map making.
“A map is more than a document to help you find your way around,”
he says.
It tells you more than what is around you: it is a key to the art,
design and political nuances of the people it is aimed at and the
time in which it was made.
This lavishly illustrated book of more than 100 different maps will
ensure you never look at an A-Z or a Tube map in quite the same
way again.
“This book is a celebration of the map,” Mr Barber explains.
“It attempts to penetrate beneath the sometimes glossy, sometimes
plain surface to look at why they came into being, who their creators
were, what purposes they intended to serve and what their relationship
was to the society in which they were created and whose values they
inevitably represented.”
The book, which includes 175 full colour pictures, starts off with
the rock drawings that were used by ancient civilisations to locate
water holes through to the modern Tube map.
Peter Barber, who grew up in Dartmouth Park studied international
relations at Sussex University. This lead on to a job in 1976 at
the British Library to help look after their map collection. He
has been there ever since.
“Right from the start maps have often had little to do with
reality,” he reveals.
“They are instead to do with visions, with how the person producing
the map sees his environment”
An example of this is the map made by Sir Christopher Wren after
the Great Fire of London. It showed a rebuilt city with neatly laid
out streets running from beautiful squares. But Wren’s vision
was never realised and the map is a tantalising look at what could
have been.
Another map of London made for Henry VIII could be accurate –
but Mr Barber is unsure.
“It is full of planned building works, many of which were never
done,” he explains.
And the same applies for the Tudor and Elizabethan maps of the world
that take in areas that had yet to be explored. Utopian islands,
laden with great riches but in seas full of monsters were de rigeur
in the age of exploration. This can partly be explained by the sailors
and merchants, who employed the map makers, hoping for investment
and patronage. They made the riches seem fantastic and the dangers
large.
Pre-Victorian maps – considered worthless in terms of the job
they were designed to do – were inaccurate – they showed
how little scientific knowledge was available to the cartographers
of the pre-enlightenment era. Even if they were accurate they would
often pandered to the foibles of the person who had commissioned
the map. Hence maps drawn for Elizabeth I showed England’s
dominions as being bigger than they really were in relation to other
countries.
However, in the past 20 years there has been a change in thinking
among geographers and cartographers.
“All researchers tended to view the evolution of mapping in
terms of the gradual victory of objective ‘truth’ and
scientific method over scientific and geographical ignorance,”
Mr Barber says.
“The achievements of national mapping agencies such as Ordnance
Survey in Britain, the United States Geographical Survey or the
Swiss Topographical Office were lauded as pinnacles of cartographic
achievement.
“With this approach came the unwritten assumptions that the
only aspect of map history worth studying was its mathematical precision.”
He says this devalued and disregarded the wider cultural context
of the maps creation.
And the idea that modern maps are completely accurate is a misnomer.
“The mapmaker knows the purpose that he wants his map to serve,”
Mr Barber explains, “and beyond that he is unwittingly guided
by the values and assumptions of the time in which he lives.”
A map has so much more than a scientific use, or indeed a cultural
maker to how the map maker saw the world. Mr Barber says the aesthetics
of maps must not be over looked.
“They are works of art as well as practical tools,” he
says.
Mr Barber believes the map has an intrinsic fascination. In the
same way people enjoy looking at models as if they are Gulliver
looking down at Lilliput, we are fascinated at having an overview
of our world.
And Mr Barber enjoys his work so much, he has decorated his home
with the work of some of his favourite cartographers.
“There are lots of maps I am attached to,” he explains.
“One particularly
stands out, and that is a map of Germany I have put in the book.
I have a copy of it at home.
And why is it special?
“Because it covers the area where my wife is from,” he
jokes. |
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