Maps – Page 9 – Green Chair Press Blog

More Map Quilts

An architect by training, Valerie Goodwin got interested in quilts when teaching architectural design classes at Florida A&M University. Her students investigated parallels between architecture and quilting as an introduction to ideas about composition, ordering systems, color and pattern. Her quilts are a continuation of that investigation, through the use of collage, layering, transparency, density and improvisation.

The quilt to the right is called “City Grid II” and is 39×46. She’s got lots of other examples on her website.

Military Mapmaking Kit

Megan, a fellow letterpress printer and instructor, sent me a link about the intriguing “military map printing case” on the left, recently acquired at Princeton University (click on the photo to see an enlargement and the symbols on the brass stamps). The post didn’t offer many details:

This mapmaker’s printing case was designed to be used by a government sponsored cartographer when working in the field around the 1860s. The buckram-covered case holds 63 brass sorts with a selection of numbers and military symbols. There is an ink pad and twelve glass bottles of ink, some with the label of the Paris manufacturer Dagron & Compagnie.

So I poked around a bit, and found a shop specializing in antique maps in the UK selling pretty much the same case (for a mere £2200 or about $3200 US). There’s a bit more information there about how a mapmaker might have used the brass stamps:

We presume the brass printing blocks would have been set in a hand-held “form” and “stamped” onto pre-existing printed topographic maps so that military officials could more clearly trace and interpret manouevres and strategies.

In Cahoots Press

Macy Chadwick is a fellow letterpress printer and book artist here in the Bay Area. She calls her press “In Cahoots” and she’s recently put up a website with photos of her work. I first got to know Macy when she wrote about her playful long-distance collaborations with her friend Lisa Hasegawa for Ampersand. They work on joint books for one hour a week and mail the results back and forth. (You can read the article here and see photos of some of their books here.) Macy has a new book, and wouldn’t you know, it’s got a map theme! Called The Topography of Home, it’s letterpress printed and the pages have cutouts inserted with silk paper that’s been stenciled. The book is to the left with a detail below.

I saw a number of books with map themes at the Codex Book Fair last week. But my best treat was at lunch before the fair, when my friend Sharon produced 2 books to show me: You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination by Katharine Harmon and The Atlas of Experience by Louise Van Swaaij & Jean Klare.
In You Are Here, Harmon says “maps intrigue us, perhaps none more than those that ignore mapping conventions” and then asks what makes a map an accurate depiction of the world and does accuracy matter? She answers with essays, quotations, poems and, yes, lots of maps. She’s built “an idiosyncratic collection of maps that transcend the norm, either because of the mapmaker’s personal viewpoint, or sense of humor, or ingenuity, or all of the above. These are maps of the imagination, as all maps are, only more so.” There are hours and hours of looking to be done with this book, but at the bottom of this post is one Sharon especially pointed out to me: “Shan map relating to a border dispute between (British) Burma and China along the Nam Mao River”. You can read an excerpt from the book and see a dozen or so maps in this article from Duke Magazine.
The Atlas of Experience is written and drawn by 2 Dutch cartographers using traditionally map-making conventions, but charting such “lands” as Secrets, Knowledge, Bad Habits, Home, Boredom, Mountains of Work, and Haute Cuisine. Each map is accompanied with quotes and commentary.

Calligrams & Word Clouds

There was a post the other day on the Book Arts email list about David Esslemont’s book My Fellow Citizens, a series of calligrams — a printed text where the typeface or the layout has a special significance — to illustrate President Obama’s inaugural address. Esslemont analyzed the word frequency in the speech, then used various ink colors and text sizes to weight the words — words used most often (nation — 11 times, new — 11 times, America — 10 times ) are large and red, the next frequency groupings are drawn in smaller blue letters and finally black ink is used for all the rest. To the left is a detail of one calligram.
This got me thinking about word clouds — a computer generated visual depiction of a text — that use font size and color to depict the frequency of words in a given text. I’ve seen “tag clouds” on lots of blogs, the idea is to give a quick summary of that particular blog. As luck would have it, that same day I visited the blog of a friend of my Mom’s, with a link to Wordle — a site that generates a word cloud from text you provide. I found the text of Obama’s speech and got this cloud:

Apparently word clouds have been used a lot to look at speeches — this blog has a post called “Word Cloud Analysis of Obama’s Inaugural Speech Compared to Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Lincoln’s.” (My most glaring observation looking at them is that Bush used the word “Freedom” in his speech an enormous number of times!)
I wonder if the clouds would be useful to understand poetry? On Wordle, someone made and posted a cloud of e.e. cummings “anyone lived in a pretty how town” — cloud below followed by text of the poem. Doesn’t help me, maybe because cummings’ word play is lost (“he sang his didn’t he danced his did”) but then again it’s only one example… Let me know what you discover with them!

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did.

Women and men (both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed (but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone’s any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
with by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men (both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

— e. e. cummings

Map-inspired Quilts

With my recent interests in maps as well as my own-going attempt at writing haiku, the other day I enjoyed browsing Leah Evan’s map-inspired quilts. Some of them (like the 3 above) are called “map haiku.” You can see more on her website.