A phenomenology of cartifacts

Introduction to the Cartifact Gallery

Jan Smits

(original release: 1999-12-31, rev. 2000-03-30, 2000-08-31, 2000-11-27, 2001-03-19, 2001-11-23, 2001-12-06, 2002-01-30, 2006-07-14, 2006-10-22, 2006-11-26, 2007-02-25, 2007-09-28, 2007-12-06, 2008-01-02, 2008-08-17, 2008-10-26, 2008-11-20, 2009-01-26, 2009-06-17, 2009-10-28, 2010-02-28)

As probably most map curators I could not escape from being confronted with cartographical curiosities. For a long time they were nothing more than frivolous things, the jollification of a mapcurator's existence, until J.B. Post came along with the inventive term "cartifacts". Somehow this term inflated their importance and it seemed easier to send out interested parties to gather these oh-so-common expressions of human need for local or global geographical artifactual visualization and memorabilia. When relatives, friends and acquaintances travel over the world they are requested to be on the lookout for unusual cartifacts. Furthermore they are requested to have an interest in cartifacts in their every-day surroundings. Especially the latter results in common objects, which one uses every day.

The gallery will not show images such as the almost $6,000 woolen carpet sighted by J.B. Post in Bloomingdale's (e-mail of 13 October 1999 to MapHist), nor the $2,000 globe made of precious stones which I viewed in one of the local mineral shops. And only replicas of the Dali paintings! Sometimes the precious cartifacts seem a bit overdone. In November 2001 a floor was laid in the Limburgs Museum, Venlo, The Netherlands, with an estimated value of Dfl. 36 million (then approximately $ 14.4 million), which centers on a map of Europe decorated with symbols of the Euro. The amount, however, was face value only as the floor was made of shredded banknotes!
An exception will be the $1,250 Buddhist Mandala, showing the way to Nirvana. And the $500 remote sensing image of the Gibson desert, Western Australia (100 x 100 cm), which I have titled Laura Ashley's Desire. The next most expensive private item up till now is a $60 hand-painted pillow-case. And the Royal Library owns an embroidered facsimile of an antique map which has cost some $500.
Neither will it show the hundred or more postcards with maps received during the past few years, mainly at the turn of the New Year from colleagues all over Europe. Finally the site will not be about "odd" or "imaginary" maps, like Maps of Imaginary Animal Islands by Mitsuharu Yamaoka, or the heart-maps (posted on MapHist by Kurt S. Masters on 19 March 2001), with some exceptions of course.
This also leaves out most of the digital or cybermaps. Though these sometimes seem to be curiosities to the uninitiated they are only odd compared with traditional analogue cartographic materials because computer technology allows for a whole new range of projections and cartographical visualizations, especially in the 3D-sphere. For those interested in imaginary maps there is e.g. the website of the Dutch 'Genootschap voor geo-fictie' (Society for geo-fiction), which contains many fictional maps and has links to sites outside The Netherlands. There even is a site, FARP : creating fantasy and science fiction worlds - day 3, which works like a guide-book in this field.

The cartifacts on the Internet can be traced through the chapter Maps, and atlases, section cartographical curiosities while browsing through Odden's Bookmarks. Maybe I should include from this such items as the flag, lions , or smoke-chart of the exhibiton at the The Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, February 1997, which unfortunately have been deleted from the Internet.
The catalogue of this exhibition in published as:

Other recent exhibitions (with catalogues) where cartifacts were part of the menu were:

The gallery will be more about maps which are produced on a vehicle or object (carrier) which is not directly associated with cartography or which prime function is not a cartographical one, or because of their extraordinary execution. Most cartifacts are of a rather down-to-earth nature and can be met in everyday social commerce. As within every collection there are some items which are not true to their nature. I have added some cartographic items, because of their extra-ordinary execution.

Though some people would like to buy (or sell) certain cartifacts most of them are not for sale and come as an accompaniment or container of something totally unrelated. Sometimes I cannot add them to the collection because they proof to be too expensive to have fun in collecting them. This makes it sometimes difficult to obtain the object as the owner is not always willing to part with it, even when it has hardly any pecuniary value.
Sometimes it is no fun at all to try to obtain them. Once I saw a young woman in a pair of map-trousers. I just came from a powerlifting-session and was still walking in my training gear. Having stalked her to the local megabookshop in Rotterdam I cornered her in the restaurant. Introducing myself as THE map curator of the Royal Library I asked her civilly whether she would be so kind as to provide me with information as to where she had bought the trousers. Looking shy or afraid she gave me the address of a nearby fashion-store. So I ran off, but of course the trousers were not for sale there, and when I returned to the bookshop the woman was gone. Only later, seeing myself in a streetmirror, I started to understand what kind of impression I might have made on her. Never saw the trousers again!

Sometimes the Internet helps. Only recently I discovered the dresses of Elisabeth Lecourt, born in 1972 in France, who works in London. Some other of her clothes-maps are shown on Weblog Bibliotheek and on Designboom.
The artist Corriette Schoenaerts used everyday clothes to create virtual maps, commissioned by the Rails Magazine, the free monthly of the Dutch Railways. She created maps of Europe, Central- and South America, and The Netherlands.
The site of Cartophilia: Maps and Map Memorabilia offers two ties, a self made map-handbag, and a pair of map-sneakers.
Manolo for the men shows a magnificent shirt by Paul Smith with a map of London and a bomber jacket of World War II.

Another fashion-designer, who uses maps, is Alviero Martini He calls his design 'Attraverso il mondo Geophilosophy'. Amongst his produces are leather bags, belts, wallets, backpacks, beauty cases etc. dresses, and bed-covers, pillowcases, towels, etc., usually with world maps. I met a whole wall of his designs at Roma's airport Leonardo da Vinci di Fiumicino, while travelling from Greece back to Holland during my 2008 summer holiday. Prices, however, are from around € 50.- upwards so it is no fun acquiring them. One of his beautiful cartidresses is shown on the body of the Israelian top model Moran Attias during a presentation in 2007.

A friend photographed this bike in 2009, which has its vulnerable parts canvassed by a world map.

Another time I tried to convince a sexshop-keeper I was interested in obtaining one of her shop-window dummies. This was a woman's torso bedecked with paint-on maps. Giving her my official business card did not produce any results unfortunately. Should people think that mapcurators are a special kind of people I agree, but our interests are sincere!
Another item one cannot get in 3-D is the cartoon of the light bulb, which illustrates the decision of the Australian government to ban the light bulb by 2012 and have them replaced by low-energy light bulbs, in order to save electricity and thus lower carbon dioxide emission and fight global warming. The cartoon is beautifully executed with the shapes of several continents having fallen out of the bulb. What does the cartoonist mean with this? Will these continents have troubles following the example, or will they show less on night-side satellite images!

Sometimes the opposite of not getting it happens. In 2005 I was called by a employee of a university library whether I was i nterested in a cartifact she had found in the legacy of a great-aunt. It turned out to be an cotton 1881 globe, which can be inflated through an umbrella-mechanism. It came in a wooden box of over ca. 70 cm length and was given as a gift in 1880 to celebrate the revival of the famous Elsevier publisher with the publication of the collected stories of Jules Verne. This photograph is from the collection of the University Library of Amsterdam. Portable silk globes of the same style from around 1840 have been offered on the BBC's Antique Road Show, but are unfortunately not available anymore on the Internet (till beginning 2007 on http://www.bbc.co.uk/antiques/antiquesroadshow/priceguide/objects/8335.shtml).

There are some cartifacts one would like to add to the collection and show in the gallery, but I can't because they are either too big or too expensive or probably not for sale. Either on the Internet discussion list MAPS-L or MapHist there has been a contention for the biggest map and/or globe. A probable contender for first place would be a project which unfortunately never materialised, the globe of Elisée Reclus (1830-1905). The organisers of the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris had set their heart upon a symbol which could vie with the Eiffeltower. Therefor Reclus designed a globe on the scale 1:100,000, with a diameter of almost 130 metres and a circumference of some 400 metres. The globe would be viewed by using spiral staircases and a kind of tram track. His desire was, however, more megalomanic as his ultimate wish was to build a globe with the scale 1:50,000! Though the terrain representation, even on such a scale, is not overwhelming Reclus refused to exaggerate the vertical scale. One wonders in how far the topography of this globe would have been generalised and how long it would have taken to find the right maps and have them drafted onto the globe. Some parts of the world -like e.g. the North and South polar region and parts of inner-Asia- were not explored yet! Because Reclus had a republican and anarchistic background his ideas were not accepted. If they had we probably would have been left with an outdated representation of the contemporary knowledge of geographical features, but a beautiful study object for historical geographers and cartographers. Because of the vast areas of ocean, for which not much data was available yet, they at least had enough room for commercials!
This megalomaniacal project of Reclus has now been overtaken by the World Island project. The World Islands are a collection of man-made islands shaped into the continents of the world, located off the coast of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. It will consist of 300 small private artificial islands divided into four categories - private homes, estate homes, dream resorts, and community islands. Each island will range from 250 to 900 thousand square feet (23.2 to 83.6 thousand square meters) in size, with 50 to 100 metres (164 to 328 feet) of water between each island. It will cover a total area of 9 kilometres (5.4 miles) in length and 6 kilometres (3.6 miles) in width, surrounded by an oval shaped breakwater. The only means of transportation between the islands will be by marine or air transport. The World Islands are located 4 kilometres off the shore of Jumeirah, close to the Palm Jumeirah, between Burj Al Arab and Port Rashid at approximately 25°13 North and 55°10 East. Each island will be sold to selected private developers and are expected to have pricing beginning at AED 25 million (US$ 6.85 million). The islands have all been created by now, but the shape of the earth has been distorted a bit due to the particulars told above. Development of Oqyana-World (after the Arabic word for 'Oceanic') will comprise 19 islands, covering the islands of Australia and New Zealand, and development will take till 2012.
Another contender would be the cartifactual red hot-air balloon in the form of a globe used by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) for public relation aims. It must be at least 30 m (100 ft.) diameter.
Another item would be the 16 x 10 m (53 x 33 ft.) De nieuwe kaart van Nederland [The new map of The Netherlands] on the scale 1:20,000 in which all spatial plans for urbanisation, transport and renewal of landscapes up to 2005 are plotted onto the topographical map. The map was installed in 1997 on dancingvinyl on the floor of the foyer of the Nederlands Architectuurinstituut [Dutch Institute for Architecture, Rotterdam] and only will be removed when it is totally worn-out. Or is it timeworn by then! A new interactive version is now available through the Internet.
Much larger, and still in existence, is the reliefmap of Guatemala by Francisco Vela from 1905. This map (horizontal scale 1:10,000; vertical scale 1:2,000) measured 990 m², and was created to educate guatemaltese children in the scape of their country. An article and photograph has been published in Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen, annual 72, 1926, pp. 212-214.

Certainly very exiting and pleasurable are the Gorilla cartoons published almost everyday in the daily paper 'De Volkskrant'. The cartoonist almost instantly metaphors crucial news into a to the point visualisation, where maps function quite often as background or are a good way of focussing on the item. Beginning in October 2006 and up till 30 March 2009 the cartoons on this list are mappish (I hope I haven't missed any!).
In the same streak one can view the sad globe, which tells us a story of plummeting house prices around the world. I do not know whether it is real or photoshopped!
A very recent controversial cartifact is the ironic sculpture Entropa, which the artist David Cerný created for the Czech precidency of the European Council (1st half year 2009). On the site EU2009.cz - Entropa the fake artists explain how they came to their expression of certain countries. During the unveiling ceremony on January 15 David Cerný again apologized to the Czech government and expressed regret that the sculpture was considered offensive. On the site 'The Map Room' a video is shown where the artist defends his project. He said the offending pieces would be removed if officials cannot be persuaded about the artists' intentions. I hope this won't come true, as freedom of expression is a value te be defended ferociously.
Some artisitic impression of EC member-states:

In the Museumpark in Rotterdam there is a monument dedicated to G.J. de Jongh (1845-1917). He was director of the department of Municipal Works of Rotterdam and extended the harbour in such a way that it became the most important port-facilities in western Europe. The monument was financed by the port-baron D.G. van Beuningen and consists, amongst others, of a

coloured map of the whole area in and around Rotterdam in 1910 and a balustrade. The balustrade is a simplified map of the river flows in and around Rotterdam, with some detail-maps and 4 globes.

Another event which took place in Rotterdam was 'The Elephant Parade', consisting of 43 man-height elephants, painted by a score of international artists. This organisation tries to save the Asian elephants in Thailand and India. The 43 arty elephants were auction of for € 248,500 in Blijdorp Zoo in Rotterdam on 17 November 2007. Among them were elephants with an old plan of Rotterdam, a modern plan of Rotterdam and one with a plan of Chang Mai in Thailand. Unfortunately too high bids for me to compete!

Another one I could not annex is a 4-5 metres high globe, which was used by Smit Internationale, a Dutch (sea-)tug and heavy load company, during the 'Wereldhavendagen' 2006 (world harbour days) in Rotterdam. It shows the globe in an enormous crane bucket, used during offshore activities.

Should I have a residence with a large garden I would like to integrate the two fountains in the form of globes (end of this file)(one terrestrial and one celestial) which are part of the baroque garden of the Loo palace, the former summer residence of the Dutch Royal Family.
It might be interesting to have a video run of the Westend-musical Napoleon (lyrics: Andrew Sabiston, music: Timothy Williams) in which the characters Napoleon and Josephine make love on a large map of Europe.
The last map I would care to think about is the one consisting of approximately 50,000 dominos which, after toppling over in a 2,472,480-stone Guinness worldrecord-effort on 5 November 1999, formed outline maps of European countries.

The cartifacts come in almost every conceivable type of material, like paper, wood, glass, metal, ceramic, plastic, cotton, nylon, rubber, cork, etc. And they are expressed in or printed/painted upon any conceivable utensil. Without any trouble I can dress a model in cartifacts without her/him being afraid of a severe winter without a roof above her/his head. And should lodgings be provided there is no need to buy a lot of household utensils, as cartifacts come in almost any practical colour and shape. Some are produced in the millions, some are unique because they are products of craft and/or art.

Of course there are also some epiphenomenal cartifactual curiosities which can be anybody's, even the non-collector. These fall mainly in the realm of philology, usually in the colloquial sphere, as there are: Expressions which contain the denomination for a certain area are not included, otherwise it would become an unending list with slugging, spitting, defiling, etc. For more mundane uses of the word map look at Definitions of the word 'map', 1649-1996 by J.H. Andrews.

Different in the literary field are those publications which have maps as support for the stories, like J.R.R. Tolkien's Beleriand or Middle-Earth, or the Map of the Ocean in 'Fit the Second' of the poem 'The Hunting of the Snark' by Lewis Carroll. A speciality in this field were the Dell crime books "complete with crime map on back cover". Between 1942 and 1951 hundreds of these paperbacks were issued with most maps designed by Ruth Belew (between issue #4 and #605). Sometimes the maps were based on real maps, sometimes they were pure phantasy, and sometimes only floor plans. For more information see the publication:

Sometimes cartifacts are more sophisticated and more common than we might think. According to Patricia Kuhl, professor in speech- and auditory sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, babies map different kinds of input and use pattern-recognition systems alike to those in remote sensing to learn to understand the value and the topology of the input. Obviously I cannot include an example as such maps are virtual knowledge systems and their output is instantaneous and like output of geographical information systems (GIS) rather volatile, unless one thinks it possible to capture them with tomography technology.

A quick survey of the Standard catalog of world coins (23rd ed., 1996, ISBN 0-87341-357-1) shows that maps on coins between ca. 1800 and the present are mainly used to commemorate. The exceptions are Brazil which minted ca. 2,750 mio map-coins between 1942-1991, France with ca. 751 mio pieces of 10 francs between 1974-1987, India (Bharat) with 284 mio pieces of 50 paise to strive for national integration between 1982-1994, and Spain with ca. 47 mio pieces of 2 pesetas in 1984.
Most of the other ca. 330 coins commemorate anniversaries of independence, discoveries (specially of the Americas), visits of the British royal family, games, historical figures, space flight, UN years or decades, etc. They are mainly minted by smaller states, seemingly to boost income from tourism. An example of this can be viewed on Peter van der Krogt's homepage, where Portuguese commemorative coins of the discovery of the Americas are shown.
Modern commemorative coins which are minted outside the official system but which are legal tender in specific areas are not mentioned. An example of this kind of coin is the Rotterdam porter, which was minted in 650,000 copies with a denomination of Dfl. 5.-, to celebrate the 650th anniversary of it getting its city-charter in 1340 and accepted for some time by the shopkeepers/retailers within the municipality of Rotterdam. One side shows a stylized plan of the city-center.
Of course the Euro, becoming legal currency of 12 nations of the European Community from 1 January 2002 onwards, will top the bill as all coins (1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 cents and 1 and 2 Euro [ images can be viewed here from the ECB-site]) and all the banknotes (5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500 [images can be downloaded here from the ECB-site) carry a map of Europe. The total amount as of 1 January 2002 of coins (approximately 50 billion) and notes (approximately 14.5 billion) comes to 664 billion Euro.
Some of the finest commemorative coins were issued in 2008 by the Dutch mint. These were a silver € 5.- coin and a gold € 10.- coin to commemorate the great Dutch reputation in the field of architecture. The efigy of queen Beatrix is made up of the names of the architects, while on the other side a map of The Netherlands is construed by using spines of books about Dutch architects. On the side it may also say something about current high-rise aspirations.

A whole lot probably can be said concerning maps on stamps. I have not looked into a world catalogue as with the coins. In a message from 11 October 2000 on Maphist the following publication was mentioned: Dictionary of World Stamps - Philatelic Atlas of the World by Kenneth C Logan, published by Hamlyn Publishing Group, 1986. For the rest I am satisfied with what is provided by Menno-Jan Kraak on his site About maps : their production and use. He treats the topics map characteristics, spatial data, representing spatial data, map scale, map types (introduction), surveying, photogrammetry, remote sensing, statistics, fieldwork (data collection), map projections, relief (data processing), map providers, orientation and navigation (map use), all chapters illustrated with exemplary stamps.
Paula van Gestel-van het Schip, editor with Explokart, in 2001 wrote a well documented article on Dutch map-makers, their maps, and of maps of Dutch territories issue don postage stamps - either as single stamps or as miniature sheets. For reference see end of this file.

Perceptional viewers have remarked of course the stylised globe in the background of the ex-libris. It is meant to be viewed as if from afar from a surrealistic landscape, filled with symbols from a personal background. The design has been gifted by a friend who owns the design company Royal Dox (which is barking somewhere off South-America) and consists of two overlayed designs, one a pointilistic seascape with globe, the other the foreground figures and lettering, the latter having been done by bamboo-stick. It was difficult to print as we sent the first 5,000 copies back to the printer as they were not up to par. With the present series we are rather satisfied.

Sometimes the fun is biased. Thanks to a colleague I found the following cartifact on the Internet. According to the blog it cam from it is never funny like this.

When you are a perceptive traveller and keep an eye out for (unusual) maps there is a lot to be met by the eye of the tourist. In October 2007 I took a trip to Japan, travelling from Tokyo down to Nagasaki, and met a lot of cartifacts or unusual maps. It started out of Shibuya station in Tokyo, where I met some naked children happily cavorting over a half-globe with a world map painted on it. In Sjinjuku we were confronted with a world clock, which shows the world map from an Asian perspective with the Pacific Ocean at its centre. After having braced a lot of stairs to the top floor of the Matsumoto castle we were confronted with an old plan of the castle and its bulwarks. On we went to Tsumago, a traditional Japanese village where in the evening there is no bar open, where you can slake your thirst. Having walked all the way to Magome we travelled to Miyama to walk again to a very traditional Japanese village with thatched rooftops: Kitamura. Near a restaurant we found this woodcut map with indescribable particulars. Near the beautifully wood-built resort we stayed at we found a Japanese camping with this plan and explanation of certain natural phenomena.
On we went, to Kyoto. In the station there was a coffee-shop called Café du Monde, with this kind of tables. More and more I see them in shops and bars in The Netherlands and Greece. From Kyoto onwards, however, our favourite coffee-shop became 'Veloce'. Not only had they very good coffee (Japan is a coffee-drinking country, despite the fact that tea is poured for free everywhere), but in their logo and in the shops maps and globes were always displayed. Most temples in Kyoto, like the Kinkakuji and the Ryoanji had their own plans displayed, as had the Kyoto Gyoen national garden or imperial garden. When you walk along the Kamo river, you know exactly what distance you make between the bridges on bicycles, as we did, thanks to this overview. From Kyoto we went to the templemountain Mount Koya. While looking at the Koyasan Guide Map we were struck by the figure in the right-hand corner. This eerily looked a caricature of or Tintin in Tibet or Tintin au Tibet, an appearance we noticed in several other publicly displayed maps in several cities. Though he has more 'Bobby's' with him than is usual!
The next stop was the War Memorial Park in Hiroshima. The first thing you are confronted with, when you enter the museum, are the scale models of Hiroshima before the bomb and Hiroshima after the bomb. Scenes I know from my hometown Rotterdam, only on a much larger scale. These images are a bit fuzzy due to my nervousness and the bad light and the poor quality of the camera I used. Another display is a globe which depicts the nuclear war potential of Eurasia and of the U.S.A.. Wishes for a better world can be seen around the park as this People at Peace globe or this lighted globe. While being in Beppu a visit to Miyajima is a must, because of its red Torii and its magnificent hill-climb. Somewhere in Beppu I found this world hanging at the entrance of one of the enormous malls you see everywhere around Japanese cities, kilometres of them!. Even while drinking coffee you suddenly see another world clockprobably with countries which produce coffee highlighted, though much smaller than the one in Tokyo. In Beppu many maps, like this road-sign or this situation map try to seduce you to visit one or more of the famous hot springs. You have to visit Mount Aso to have a look at the combustious crater lake, and when the sulphur-containing steam drives you away from the crater it is hoped that this map helps you to evacuate quickly enough.
Coming to Nagasaki you get a cquainted with its surroundings by the pavement tiles. Of course there are many displays of the old Dutch factory village of Deshima, which after the nuclear devastations has been rebuilt 1:1 with a scale model included! When we arrived finally in Fukuoka we met another coffee-globe in one of our Veloce's. From there we flew to Tokyo where we were confronted again with a world clock, now in coppery outlines. I knew I was going to buy one last cartifact while I flew back home. They are draped around the bodies of the JAL-stewardesses, though they displayed parts of plans of Paris I think and had nothing to do with Japan. They could be bought flying in, but carrying this all the way around Japan was too much of a trouble. My bad luck! They can only be bought flying in and not flying out, no matter how much I pleaded with the stewardesses.

Unfortunately I do not have relatives with time to photograph and scan well. I have, however, family who are interested in gadgets, which sometimes creates possibilities for me to experiment.
One of my brothers in 1999 owns a Kodak DC200 Digital Camera, which is accompanied by a computer processing programme called Kodak Digital Science.
This makes for experimental technology not giving always the results wanted. The camera functions rather well when overview images are required, but lacks focus when detailed images are needed.
There is no way of focussing and the flash almost always works which makes for a lot of glitter. All in all a first-generation technology with a lot of teething troubles, but very handy in some ways especially when you are short in time and want to do it cheap.
As the technology provides images in Kodak FlashPix-format (.fpx) these have to be converted to JPEG-format (.jpg). Depending on the image (large coloured polygons or not) this results in files between approximately 75 and 300 Kb.
The files as provided to the Internet are usually larger-than-screen. For better results they should be downloaded to an image-processing programme and downsized with a ratio of 1:3. Since the middle of 2001 I take photographs again with my Canon F1 camera and digitize them with the scanner incorporated in my HP G55 Office printer/scanner/copier. With the latter also the picture of the J.B. Post collection have been scanned. Even then small objects will not always have a sharp focus. To ameliorate this I have started in 2006 to scan anew some objects and have asked a friend, who almost is like a professional photographer, to take new pictures of small or hard to photograph cartifacts. As you can see in the list, the result are far better than 7 years ago. Nowadays I sometimes use the scanner or a camera from one of my brothers or sisters, with better or worse results.
At the end of the list I'll add some other cartifact sites for those who are used to higher resolution images!

The files provided in the gallery contain hidden metadata in the HTML-text and consist of a short description followed by the image. Apologies are made beforehand if some of the images still have poor quality. They are meant, however, to provide an insight into the diversity of cartifacts and are not meant for visual studies or research.

Unintentionally the diversity of cartifacts shows how cartographic visualizations permeat society. Cartography is not only seen as a mode to express specific visualizations of statistical and other geographical data or phenomena, but also as a vehicle to forward or promote an idea, sometimes even becoming iconological. Especially since satellites and astronauts have photographed the terra-globe from a remote distance its iconological use has increased enormously. Especially in advertising as well as anything which has global, continental or national backgrounds, not mentioning here anything more about Google Earth.
This endangers the intrinsic value of cartographical materials in general as they sometimes seem to be too common to generate special interest in their content nor evoke a sense of preservation of this special kind of information. It somehow seems to make cartography being taken for granted too easily by the public in general. And we should wonder whether that makes us fall into the class of trivial pursuit or that of serious business.
To oppose such an idea I hope that non-professional viewers get as much satisfaction of a site like An Atlas of Cyberspaces , which to my horror had disappeared from the Internet in 2007. Fortunately it returned, but its author Martin Dodge, could not update it anymore due to his research having moved into a different direction. So it shows new visualizations from the era 1997-2004. But thanks to the good grace of Martin Dodge it is now free downloadable as .pdf-file!!
One could also visit the map site of the Alexandria Digital Library and other cartifactual sites. And for children we have the beautiful site Maps, atlases and cartographic sites for children of the ICA Commission on Cartography and Children (ICA-CCC).
For those who still want to see the wild side there is always the site of Strange maps, which holds as of October 2009 some 414 expressions of strange cartography with explanatory texts.

Items with the remark KB belong to the collection of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National Library of The Netherlands.

I hope that the gallery at least will provide some amusement to viewers and spawn much interest in cartifactual information. If it entices or seduces somebody to become interested in real cartography or cartographical visualization the better I will feel.

Some 40 items were lent to the Nationaal Onderwijsmuseum (National Education Museum) in Rotterdam for the exhibition 'Waar ben ik', which lasted from the beginning of October 2006 till the end of June 2007. The exhibition tried in an interactive way to interest children from the higher classes of primary schools and the lower classes of secondary schools in the topic of geography and mapping.

And could the lady with the trousers provide me with the necessary information?

Articles:
Smits, Jan (2009). Cartifacts, a completely different kind of map! : humor
In: Journal of Map & Geography Libraries, ISSN 1542-0353, Volume 5, issue 2, p. 177-186.

Gestel-van het Schip, Paula (2001). Nederlandse historische kartofilatelie
In: Caert-thresoor : tijdschrift voor de geschiedenis van de kartografie, ISSN 0167-4994, 20e jrg, nr. 2, p.29-40.

E-mail: jan.smits@kb.nl

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