VOTES & VIEWS # 34
A map is a wondrous thing: one
man’s attempt at describing where the viewer could go to, how there was access
to the place, roads, rivers – perhaps even a habitation or settlement where
he could find help if in need – or merely a depiction of how the artist or
compiler imagined his physical environment.
There are indications that even prehistoric man started using graphic means on
the walls of caves, delineating points of reference and a sort of ‘x marks the
spot’. That hot-spot of civilization, the Middle
East, shows evidence of pottery and wall
paintings that point to the early beginning of a view of the landscape from
above, which meant that so much more detail could be seen than from a ground perspective. The ancient Greeks, Romans and Chinese made giant
leaps in both the scientific basis of cartography, as well as the depiction of
their world. During the early centuries of this era, the
Arabs and Indians led the way, but after the Renaissance, Europeans slowly
progressed beyond the roteiros of the
Portuguese (which gave detailed verbal instructions on coastal features and
bearings to guide the way) to the first maps printed on paper, which were
carried as aids to exploration of the globe.
It is said that the expansion of European power across the world can be
attributed in part to late 15th Century advances in cartography. Especially early maps of the east coast of America, and
depictions of the African continent (of which the general outline was known by
the early 1500’s) must have aroused the cupidity of kings and adventurers alike. While any accuracy was confined to a few stretches
of well-known coastline, the interior could be adorned with fanciful rivers,
mountain ranges, lakes and fabulous cities of which legends abounded.
Every time I see a map of Africa or part thereof, in moderate dimensions,
framed and displayed on an office or
study wall, I have this twinge of regret.
Why ? Well, because most likely some perfectly good volume dealing with the
history, geography or exploration of the continent has been deprived of a vital
part – if it hasn’t been entirely destroyed by some ‘breaker’ as these
desecrators of books are called – people who remove illustrations and maps from
antique volumes in the hope of being able to sell them singly at a higher price
than the book in its entirety can achieve, all in pursuit of interior
decoration and profit. These are the 18th and 19th
Century maps one is most likely to run across.
The works of great 16th Century mapmakers, such as Mercator or
Ortelius, and even 17th Century notables like Blaeu, de Lille,
Allard and the whole swathe of engravers who copied, decorated and generally
muddied the pond insofar as exactitude of directions were concerned, have mostly
already been snapped up and adorn the walls of museums, libraries, archives and
corporate offices.
Still, it is possible to pick up
the odd gem, but beware of forgeries.
With the art of copying and printing at a truly remarkable stage of development,
there exist facilities that can replicate old lithographs so faithfully, that
it needs an expert to differentiate between a fake and the real thing. Quite frequently forgers use old paper – again,
ripped from broken-up volumes, which makes it even more difficult to invest one’s
money wisely. It is almost a
certainty that somewhere out East there are already factories specialising in
the manufacture of suitably aged, fine papers, complete down to the appropriate
watermark. Some years back I was
approached by a client who wanted to sell a framed map by Caroli Allard - Novissima et Perfectissima Africae Descriptio. A
little bit of research gave me its date (1690), and everything about it seemed
right: islands floating in an ocean
where they had no right to be, a lavish cartouche with crocodiles, lions,
pyramids and a black Venus, down to the oxidation of the green pigment and
light browning of the paper. Even
though I trusted my client (who said he’d bought it at an auction of an estate,
and could give all the particulars ) I insisted on opening up the framed piece
to inspect everything with a very large lens.
So far I’m happy with my purchase; a moderately uncommon example of the cartographer’s
skills of the period, which now hangs on the wall above this computer.
For any aspiring
collector of African maps, two books on the subject are an absolute must – Tooley’s Collectors' Guide to Maps of the African Continent and Southern Africa and
Oscar Norwich’s Maps of Southern Africa. Both
are out of print, but copies are often available from antiquarian dealers. There are quite a few other books on the subject,
but most of these also end with maps published up to the late 19th
century, like the two volumes mentioned, which still give a fair amount of
information on works by late Victorian publishers in the UK. Some fine illustrative and painstakingly correct
maps were also made during this period between the late 18th and
early 20th Century by the firm Justus Perthes in Germany. The latter have the advantage of being reasonably
priced due to their abundance. The
internet is a great help in tracing dates of publication, details of the
engravers’ work and lives, as well as rarity and a rough guide to prices. There is, as far as I know, no work dealing with
more modern, yet already very collectible maps.
For collectors in Southern Africa the boom in diamonds and gold, the Zulu
War, the Boer War and its aftermath all created a thirst for knowledge about
the subcontinent. Prospective
immigrants, traders, prospectors and businessmen all needed to know more about
the region, communications, towns, climate, geology and the like. Numerous firms at the Cape as well as in Britain obliged
with handsome, large folding maps in hardcover or softcover, some on linen
backing for hard wear. These were at
great pains to convince the aspiring immigrant that our infrastructure was
expanding apace, that there were roads and towns, yet there was plenty of
elbow-room and vast open spaces in which to settle, hunt or do whatever one
fancied. Ten or twenty years ago one
could pick up arcane gems like Richards’ Postal Route Map of the Cape Colony and Adjacent
Territories, Jeppe’s Map of the Transvaal or even an
anonymously published Map No 3 of the Western Cape for a hundred rands or so. Nowadays they go at auction for prices in the
thousands of rands – not bad even if you discount our rampant inflation.
Early geological maps are
much prized, presumably by collectors with mining backgrounds or even the great
mining houses, which would proudly display luridly coloured sheets of (to the
layman) incomprehensibly named strata as the structure of gold-bearing reefs
was delineated, or plans of claims to fabulously rich chunks of ‘blue ground’ which
were allocated to eager prospectors.
Of course, the real prize within this genre is the hand-drawn map. Either a famous geologist’s drawing of ‘work in
progress’ or better still, a ‘treasure map’ such as I was fortunate to acquire
and sold after much soul-searching since I coveted it for my own collection. This was one Ambrose Carroll’s little pet project. He was a notable treasure-hunter in the early
1900’s. He conceived a number of
schemes to raise specie from sunken ships and to find diamonds on the Guano Islands
off the Namibian coast and elsewhere.
Included in his scrapbook of madcap ideas was a beautifully executed sketch-map,
complete with the magic word ‘diamonds’ inserted here and there to whet
the appetite. This fine map was the
handiwork of one officer Pinnock of the 1st Cape Mounted Police, as
the signature would have it, and I have often wondered at the story behind this
partnership. Another great
prospector-adventurer was Fred Cornell, and though he did not leave any
hand-drawn maps among the effects I was asked to sell, there were a number of
claim diagrams/maps, which, touched by the magic wand of his name, made a few
collectors very happy.
Any type of war
memorabilia has a wide appeal to collectors.
Diaries and maps are no exception, and depending on the rank of the soldier,
regiment and actions described or mapped, they can be exceedingly valuable. Hand-drawn sketch maps in this sort of situation
are prime collectibles, but one needs to have some supporting documents to
support their provenance. During the
early stages of the Anglo-Boer War, almost hysterical patriotism reigned in
Britain and the Cape, so numerous maps were published to inform the patriots of
the situation of ‘The Seat of War’ and ‘The Boer Republics’ and similar titles. None of these maps showed much that was new, but
the public lapped them up and they have become a genre in themselves. Much more interesting, were the little pocket maps
issued by J Wood for the Field Intelligence Department in ‘a scale of 3.94 miles to the inch’.
Many early editions of these maps, from 1899 onwards to 1902, bear the rather
endearing legend ‘This map is not to be
considered absolutely accurate’ – not many surprises then, as features like horse troughs,
windmills, springs and gates, feature among the buildings and kopjes that
littered the empty paper plains of Namaqualand and Bushmanland. As intelligence improved, new and revised maps
were issued – some so fresh that some of the information was hand-written
instead of typeset. There are 57
maps in the grid covering the Northern, Western and Southern Cape, and though I
have collected a number of them, the outlay is just too much for my Namaqualand
Collection, which focuses primarily on written material, so I have a full set
of electronic images on file instead, which I could have printed out quite reasonably,
if desired. These maps are often
inscribed with the owner’s names, regimental data, and even stains from hard
wear in the field – and in one instance a sinister brown splash of blood marred
the back of one that passed through my hands..
Only
thirteen years after the end of that conflict, Germany
and Britain went to war, and
since Gen. Botha had decided to
stand behind his erstwhile victors, South Africa
invaded South West, but not before a few anxious moments as the 1914 Rebellion
set brother against brother in the Northern
Cape. Once
again the region came under the spotlight, and an almost identical set of revised
maps was commissioned to reflect the salient features of the country from where
the assault would be launched by government forces.
In this war the set of maps extended into German South West, but the progress
of the war soon outran the mapping division’s efforts when the Germans
capitulated in 1915. Both of these sets of maps in their various
editions come up for sale quite regularly, and either or both would make a
suitable subject for an intensive collection without being ruinously expensive. Having said that, their prices have risen
dramatically over the past decade or two.
World War I in East Africa must also have produced its rash of maps, but these
seem much less common, and I have only come across a few, mostly of German
origin, from that campaign.
As
technology forged ahead, motor cars and planes became the order of the day. The rutted tracks of the ox-wagon were replaced
with first gravel roads and drifts and ponts, then bridges and tarred roads
made their debut. Those much beloved maps issued by the petrol
companies, automobile clubs and fledgling tourism organisations are steadily rising in the
appreciation of collectors of maps.
Areas of interest to lovers of nature, such as
National Parks, were mapped. Even
folders of route maps from the Cape to Cairo, or
from Beira to Bagamoyo for those with a
hankering for crossing the Dark Continent,
were available. Just tracing a route
and reading the warnings are enough to conjure up the romance of the road. ‘Danger – Elephants’; ‘No petrol for 450 miles’;
‘Impassable in the Wet’; ‘Beware of Crocodiles’.
Not that these routes have become much safer in modern times. All the abovementioned hazards are still present
with the added peril of ‘War-zone’ added for good measure
Lastly a short mention
needs to be made of hand-drawn and painted maps. They should never be ignored
by the collector, as they are often labours of love, or part of a vocation. My
first map was one of these; drawn by some nameless forestry official tasked
with looking after a huge stretch of Maputaland in Northern
Natal. The date was somewhere in the early 1950’s, and it had neat
hand-lettering of the names of even the meanest kraal, pan, rivulet and hill,
while delicate watercolour washes had been used to denote plantations, bodies
of water, dune forests and scrubland. After a sojourn of almost fifty years in
my care, I willingly passed it on to a client who thought he recognised his
grandfather’s hand in the making. It meant more to him than to me.
An allied genre would be
town and city plans and maps. These
are actually quite common, since they generally owe their presence in the
market to the previously mentioned scavengers who dismember books, but they are
not the sort of thing I can get enthused about.
Still - they are all part of getting you
to ‘know where you’re going to’.
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