THE MAP-MAKING ART

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 79, 27 December 1928, Page 9

THE MAP-MAKING ART

PRESENT-DAY LETTERING

criticised:

A plea for a return to the traditional style of map-making, which was lost during the 18th. and 19th centuries, was made by Captain J. G. Withycoinbe in an address to the Royal Geographical Society. He said that by the middle of the 16th century copper plates had taken the place of wood blocks, and for nearly 200 years cartographers and map engravers were artist-craftsmen who looked on it as part of their duty to make their productions beautiful as well as accurate and practically serviceable. From the first they realised the importance and decorative possibilities of fine lettering. The cartographers usually supplied the engravers with fair drawings which were copied stroke for stroke, and it was a long time before the tradition of the reed-pen writer was superseded; for nearly 200 years engravers continued to imitate peu strokes with the burin, and the old style italic type was used until the end of the 18th century. In the latter half of the 18th century a change took place, and it Was not a change for the better. The pointed Italian handwriting began to give place to the commercial round hand taught b"y the writing masters. The Roman alphabets were not only ruined aesthetically, but as the degeneration proceeded they became less legible. To-day we were enjoying a revival of fine printing. Book printers, advertisement and poster designers. architects, shop sign and facia writers had all gone back to the traditional style, of lettering, but cartographers had been slow to abandon the convention of the engravers. Heliozincography had set the draughtsmen free from the limitations Imposed by engraving, but they had not yet realised the possibilities which the hello process opened for them. Captain M’ithyeombe added that the Ordnance Survey, was about to begin the revision of the lin map of England and Wales. The new map would be replotted and redrawn for reproduction by heliozincography. It was a great opportunity to restore the traditional style of lettering and decoration, which had been steadily degenerating for the past 150 years.