Traveling in Style
Perhaps we’ve just been overexposed to Canadian Pacific’s historic promotional material, but enjoying a fine meal while glorious views of Stoney Creek and the Selkirks rush by to the clickity-clack of the railroad ties sure sounds enticing. This section of mountainous track and bridges between Field and Revelstoke was an engineering marvel of its day, […]
地理 初歩 – Elementary Geography to learn by heart
Kaisei chiri shoho ansha no zu Another gorgeous woodcut from the Japanese Maps of the Tokugawa Era digital collection (almost all of which could probably be featured here..) We were particularly struck by the almost abstract beauty in this piece’s mix of cartographic and illustrated blocks. Its intended function remains elusive, although the title suggests an instructional […]
Bankoku-sozu
This double-sided Japanese woodcut displays a world map on the front and illustrated examples of the peoples of the world on the verso. It exemplifies the Bankoku-sozu (“complete maps of the peoples of the world”) style of cartography influenced by European techniques and geographic knowledge in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It can be found in the Japanese […]