A Great Lakes map, a re-strike originally made by the Jesuit priest Francesco Bressani in 1657 and recreated around 1900, sold for $5,040 in an online auction.
Only two examples of the original map survive. The original map was printed on two sheets and covered the St. Lawrence River in addition to the Great Lakes; the 1900 copy consists of only the left (or western) sheet.
Bressani, who served in Quebec in the 1640s, was captured and tortured by the Iroquois, then survived and returned to Italy, where he created the map. He lost three fingers on his right hand during his captivity and torture, but compiled the map drawing based on Jesuit sources and likely, with influence of another mapmaker of the time, Nicolas Sanson.
It is a highly accurate map of the eastern Great Lakes and Ottowa River regions. In it, Georgian Bay is described in great detail. Lake Erie is placed at a higher latitude than on the map of the same region created by Sanson. Father Bressani embellished his work with several drawings (remarkable considering his missing fingers); these included depictions of the Indians, one showing a converted family praying.
Read the press release about the Great Lakes map as well as other antique maps sold at the auction.
The website’s Zoomify feature in View Collection has been upgraded and improved.
You can now access our Teacher Resources by creating a search across multiple portals of educational levels, topics, ideas and skills.
Two new Maps in the News current events features with articles detailing Bolivia and New Orleans are now available with their related Teacher Resources.
An engaging, educational, and interactive Virtual Tour for our current exhibit Boston & Beyond has been uploaded to the site with its related Teacher Resources. You are now able to download PDF’s of maps that are out of copyright (pre-1923) for insertion into reports or power point presentations.
In May, you will be able to buy a map reproductions on line.
The Mapping of Ukraine: European Cartography and Maps of Early Modern Ukraine, 1550-1799, includes 42 original maps published by European mapmakers over a 250-year period. A majority of the maps in the exhibition are from the Museum’s Marie Halun Bloch Collection, which consists of 52 maps bequeathed to the Museum by the Ukrainian American writer of children’s books upon her death in 1998.
Dr. Bohdan Kordan, Professor of International Relations and Chair of the Department of Political Studies, St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan, and curator of the exhibition, will be on hand for its opening.
A new 30 minute DVD from ODTMaps about Arno Peters’ cartography will be available for sale on April 21, 2008. The documentary, Arno Peters: Radical Map, Remarkable Man, traces the controversy and conflict the Peters World Map generated and “challenges viewers to think critically about media messages of all kinds.”
I found it interesting to recently read about how it is still necessary to map some areas of the world on foot, envoking the exploratory nature of cartography of old.
While most maps today are produced from satellite images, a project by UK-based charity The Rainforest Foundation is using handheld GPS units to map parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo where thick forest and conflict have prevented effective mapping.
In one of the sectors of the territory that the groups are mapping at the moment, there are something like 190 villages but on the official map there are about 30,” Cath Long of the Rainforest Foundation which is organising the project told the BBC’s Network Africa.
Old maps, including maps of London from 1840, spotted by a volunteer in a stock room at an Oxfam shop in England, went for £2,000 (approx. $4,000USD) at a charity auction the other day.
The star lot was a plan of London and its environs dating from 1840, showing the boundaries of the cities of London and Westminster, the metropolitan borough and parishes and distances of principal roads from the general post office.
The document was expected to fetch up to £300 but sold for £1,200.
It’s Pittsburgh’s 250th Anniversary this year and as part of the celebrations, a number of maps have been assembled and scanned for online viewing at Pittsburgh 250: Maps from 1759 to Almost Now.
General John Forbes bestowed the name on the Forks of the Ohio in November, 1758, after chasing out the French & Indians and occupying an abandoned Fort Duquesne. The name honors William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and head of government at the time. This selection of maps and views presents a history of the city and region from that moment to near the present; some can be seen on other pages of this website.
Map the Universe is currently experiencing technical difficulties. I have no idea where the handy sidebar went along the righthand side of the page, nor where my footer has gone. I do not know why the formatting has run wild on individual post pages, etc.,
I do know this - I probably broke it, so I should probably try to fix it.
Two antique globes, one of the sky, one of the earth, by famous cartographer Willem Janszoon Blaeu, have been sold for EUR 800,000 at auction at Christie’s in Amsterdam. Bought for a private collection in Europe, Christie’s says this is the largest sum ever paid for a work of art in the Netherlands, with the exception of paintings.
Apparently the Blaeu Globes went to a Dutch collector for more than double the estimated price. The reason for auctioning the globes? Liechtenstein royal Prince Hans Adam stated:
“There is just not enough room to either exhibit all those works of art in museums or to use them for decoration purposes in our private apartments.”
Stumble it!
It’s Pittsburgh’s 250th Anniversary this year and as part of the celebrations, a number of maps have been assembled and scanned for online viewing at 
Apparently the Blaeu Globes went to a Dutch collector for more than double the estimated price. The reason for auctioning the globes? Liechtenstein royal Prince Hans Adam stated:
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