The Beauty of Maps is a BBC 4 television series on the history of maps, I have only just come across this programme and seems really interesting, I’ve still got episode’s 2 and 3 to watch. I stumbled across this programme by accident while browsing on the BBC iPlayer and watching at the moment.
At the beginning of episode 1 of the series the introduction to maps was a good way of describing them.
❝ The British Library in London is home to a staggering 4 and a half million maps. Mysterious and beautiful these rarely seen treasures are much more than just physical depictions of the world. The map is definitely by far the best synthesis of typography, so the geography of a place together with it’s history and of course art as well so you’ve got all great themes all combining in one to produce something of huge beauty. Our lover fair with maps is as old as civilization it’s self. Each map tells it’s own story and hides it’s own secrets, maps delight, they unsettle, they revile deep truths, not just about where we come from but about who we are. A map is a thing of beauty it’s a place where perhaps you express the cosmos you try and bring together the whole view of the world so you can understand it… ❞
This is a transcript from episode 1 and you can continue to watch this programme on the BBC iPlayer here.
Taken from BBC iPlayer
The Beauty of Maps – 1. Medieval Maps – Mapping the Medieval Mind
❝Documentary series charting the visual appeal and historical meaning of maps.
The Hereford Mappa Mundi is the largest intact Medieval wall map in the world and its ambition is breathtaking – to picture all of human knowledge in a single image. The work of a team of artists, the world it portrays is overflowing with life, featuring Classical and Biblical history, contemporary buildings and events, animals and plants from across the globe, and the infamous ‘monstrous races’ which were believed to inhabit the remotest corners of the Earth.
The Mappa Mundi, meaning ‘cloth of the world’, has spent most of its long life at Hereford Cathedral, rarely emerging from behind its glass case. The programme represents a rare opportunity to get close to the map and explore its detail, giving a unique insight into the Medieval mind. This is also the first programme to show the map in its original glory, revealing the results of a remarkable year-long project by the Folio Society to restore it using the latest digital technology.
The map has a chequered history. Since its glory days in the 1300s it has languished forgotten in storerooms, been dismissed as a curious ‘monstrosity’, and controversially almost sold. Only in the last 20 years have scholars and artists realised its true depth and meaning, with the map exerting an extraordinary power over those who come into contact with it. The programme meets some of these individuals, from scholars and map lovers to Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry, whose own work, the Map of Nowhere, is inspired by the Mappa Mundi.❞
The Beauty of Maps BBC website
Keep up the good work, I like your writing.