Five Hundred Years of Printed Maps

You can trace five centuries of printed maps from a 1472 copy of the T-O Map by Isidore of Seville, generally considered to be the first printed map, to a colored 1958 Tourist Map of Southern California called Roads to Romance. A landmark private collection in La Jolla showed that arc by grouping plates by use, with Exploration, Colonization, California as an Island and Sea Charts in the main hall and separate galleries for Europe, Celestial, Holy Land, Africa, and Asia.

How did print fix maps on paper?

Before print, historical records describe maps on clay, wood, stone, silk, and paper, and notes that the shape of the Earth was unknown for small areas and that curvature did not matter. Since the age of Classical Greece, maps of large regions and especially of the world have used projection from a model globe to control how distortion is apportioned on the map. You see the result in the exhibition when a circular T-O diagram hangs near later engraved plates that use grids, scales, and orientation, so the change is practical and visible.

China gives you a clear thread. Seven Qin State maps from the 4th century BC were drawn with black ink on wooden blocks and show tributary systems of the Jialing River in Sichuan over an area measuring 107 by 68 km, with rectangular symbols for counties and line symbols for rivers and roads. Han dynasty maps found at Mawangdui place south at the top, cover a larger area, use more symbols and add military sites, population notes, and measured distances. In 267, Pei Xiu was appointed Minister of Works and set out six principles for mapmaking, including the rectangular grid and the graduated scale for distance, and later writers compare his role to that of Ptolemy.

What do exploration and colonization walls teach you?

In the main hall, maps categorized by Exploration and Colonization let you compare how a coastline becomes a claim. The 1493 Basel edition of the Columbus Letter, in its second edition, is the only edition to contain a map, and the museum copy is one of two known copies. Nearby, the 1816 first edition of John Melish's map of the United States and the colorful Gold Rush Map by William Jackson show how print served travelers, settlers, and buyers of land. You learn to ask who paid for the survey, what route was promoted, and what was left blank.

That question also fits the broad survey of cartography that moves from Babylonian clay tablets and Greek world maps to portolan charts and modern imaging. The broad survey notes the Carta Pisana portolan chart, made at the end of the 13th century, dated 1275 to 1300, as the oldest surviving nautical chart showing accurate navigational directions. When you stand in front of sea charts after looking at colonization maps, you can feel the shift from inland ownership to courses, winds and anchorages.

Why did California appear as an island?

The 1621 Briggs map that shows California as an island was described in the exhibition as the map that arguably started the whole business. You can read it as a lesson in copying. Once an error entered an influential plate, other makers repeated it because buyers expected it and because correction required new surveys. The display sets that plate among other California maps, and the Green Room Gallery holds the early real estate maps of San Diego, so you see how a geographic idea shaped property, travel, and identity for more than a century.

How do sea charts differ from land maps?

Sea charts in the main hall use rhumb lines, coastal profiles, and soundings where land maps use boundaries and towns. The Islamic regional cartography described in the survey helps you read them, with the Balkhi school maps defined by political boundaries and equalized distances between stops, and Muhammad al-Idrisi dividing the known world into ten sections in longitude and seven climes in latitude. His Tabula Rogeriana, drawn for Roger II of Sicily in 1154, mapped the world in 70 rectangular sections and reported the correct dual sources of the Nile, the coast of Ghana, and mention of Norway. Compare that working method with the 1724 black-and-white engraved map by Francois Valentyn, called Nieuwe Carte van Japan, which was based on service with the Dutch East India Company and shows the route from Nagasaki to Edo.

What do the Green, Purple and Yellow rooms show?

The Green Room Gallery holds an eclectic mix, from a rare manuscript map of New England by John Thornton to a large 1946 California Wine map by Ruth Taylor White. Here are also early real estate maps of San Diego and five pictograph maps by the 20th-century artist and cartographer Jo Mora. You move from manuscript ink to printed color to pictorial storytelling, and the paper, lettering, and symbols tell you who each map was made to please.

The Purple Room Gallery highlights maps of Europe, the Heavens and the Holy Land, with work by Andreas Cellarius and a remarkable bird's-eye view of the Eastern Mediterranean by Bernhard Breydenbach which centers on and highlights the Holy City of Jerusalem. The same broad survey notes a Map of the Holy Land by Pietro Vesconte in 1321, described by Adolf Erik Nordenskiold as the first non-Ptolemaic map of a definite country; the archived exhibition page names no Vesconte plate in the Purple Room. For the heavens, look for how Cellarius draws constellations as figures over a gridded sphere, which teaches you that celestial maps are also projections with choices about center and orientation.

Where do Ptolemy and later makers meet?

The Yellow Room is devoted to maps of Africa and Asia, including five done on Ptolemaic projections such as Lorenz Fries's 1535 untitled map of China and Japan. Ptolemy, active between 90 and 168, suggested precise methods for fixing position with parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude, and his Geographia carried an index of place names with coordinates, scale, conventional signs with legends and the practice of placing north at the top and east to the right. Eratosthenes, who lived from 275 to 195 BC, had earlier argued that accurate mapping depends on accurate linear measurement and used meridians and parallels over a map with its origin in Rhodes, with five climatic regions. Marinus of Tyre, living from about AD 70 to 130, first assigned to each place a proper latitude and longitude, used the parallel of Rhodes, set his zero meridian through the Isles of the Blessed and invented equirectangular projection.

Later German work shows how those ancient tools returned through print. Martin Behaim made the oldest surviving terrestrial globe in 1492, but it lacked the Americas, and Martin Waldseemuller's world map of 1507 was the first to use the term America for the Western continents. In the cases you find rare atlases by Blaeu, Ortelius, De Wit and others, plus work by Father Kino, Benjamin Franklin and a beautiful edition of the Nuremberg Chronicles. The author list on display reads like a roll call from the 15th to the mid-20th century and includes Ortelius, Hondius, Munster, Blaeu, Mercator, Melish, Sanson, DeFer, DeWit, Cellarius, Moll, DeJode, Speed, Mortier and Van de Aa.

How can you read a wall of famous names?

Start with projection, scale, and purpose rather than age alone. Ask whether north is at the top, as in Ptolemaic practice, or south, as in several Han maps, and whether distance comes from days of sailing and days of marching, as in Hecataeus, or from a graduated grid, as in Pei Xiu. Check the imprint, the dedication, and the route lines, because the Valentyn Japan plate and the Thornton New England manuscript show different kinds of authority, one from company service and one from survey and draftsmanship. For plates that interest you, compare them with the landmark plates explained one by one and then locate the originals or high-resolution scans through the great map libraries around the world.

Take one map from each room and sketch its frame, its title cartouche, its scale statement, and its treatment of water. Note where the maker signs, where the seller adds a privilege, and where color was added by hand or by later printing. Then place those notes beside the timeline from the 1472 T-O copy to the 1958 Roads to Romance and watch the craft move from symbol to measurement to promotion without losing its power to persuade.