Saturday, August 15, 2009

Cartography

I do so love a good map. A good one is a work of art, and like all works of art, rare. For instance, I’ve never liked the ubiquitous National Geographic maps. Oh, I poured over them for years, but the colors have always struck me as unappealing. Meanwhile, typical of the descent of quality via technology, Google and the other internet maps, while obviously utilitarian, are ugly as sin.

The sheet above, from the Oxford Advanced Atlas (3rd Revised, 1928), is of the Scottish Highlands, and it's a beauty. My brother found this volume somewhere, and I've since liberated it from the musty clutches of storage.

The atlas shares the biases of its times (geography is one of the most imperialist of disciplines):

Heathens?

1 comment:

amy merrick said...

i definitely fall into the heathen category.