Shop for Antique Prints, Maps, Illustrated Books, Vintage Magazines, Ephemera
Welcome to oldimprints.com galleries of historic original vintage graphics: Antique Prints (including vintage travel posters), Antique Maps (with early 20th century pictorial and bird's eye view maps), Collectible Books (illustrated and children's books a specialty), Vintage Magazines, & Paper Ephemera . ALL THE ITEMS LISTED ON OUR WEBSITE ARE ANTIQUE OR VINTAGE, AS DESCRIBED. We ship worldwide: please browse & bookmark this page!
The Annual Meeting of the
American Historical Print Collectors Society was held here in Portland, Oregon on May 14 to May 16, 2009. As a great admirer of the little known regional magazine
The West Shore published in Portland between 1875 and 1891, I thought it important to introduce visitors to this illustrated documentary resource of our region. Although it started out primarily as a literary magazine, it took on the nature of a "booster" or promotional magazine as the region attracted immigrants from the East Coast and Europe, and for this purpose striking and informative images were crucial. The image reproduced here is a detail of the color lithographic supplement "Portland The Metropolis of the Northwest" which was included with the May 1888 issue.
Click here to read a brief history of the magazine.
We're happy to offer our contribution to the economic stimulus with a very attractive price on a series of beautifully produced late nineteenth century chromolithographs depicting fabric designs through the ages. Published in a portfolio
L'Ornement des Tissus in Paris in 1877, these designs have a timeless appeal heightened by the rich coloration possible with chromolithography.
At only $38 each these are an excellent buy, and will give years of pleasure displayed in groupings on your wall...
Click here to view our current selection of these stunning designs
Pictorial Maps of the Twentieth Century
are an area of collecting that has, until recently, received little attention by dealers, collectors, and libraries. However, along with the particular rewards of an unexplored area of collecting comes the frustration of the lack of documentation regarding the creative forces behind what was an explosive cultural phenomenon in the early decades of the twentieth century.
Pictorial maps have long appealed to me because they incorporate two of my interests: a fascination with other cultures (which for someone who has had a very peripatetic upbringing means all cultures!) and a love of pictures. Therefore, as I acquire these artifacts reflecting the popular culture and design aesthetic of their day, I endeavour to research their origins. Even if produced in relatively large quantity (often given away free, some with instructions to “pin on the wall”), many of these maps are now quite scarce because of their intended ephemeral nature.
MacDonald Gill’s
Wonderground Map of London Town (1913) has always struck me as a unique product from a rather pedestrian period of map publication: an outstanding graphic — an oversized explosion of color and humor—harnessed to the goal of publicizing a burgeoning popular transportation system serving a wide public base. Over time I gathered many other maps from the 1920s and 30s that showed a clear debt to Gill’s prototype and thought of them as being appropriately grouped under the umbrella term “wonder maps.” My article exploring this genre
“MacDonald Gill: The Wonderground Map of 1913 and Its Influence” appears in the Spring 2009 issue of the
Journal of the International Map Collectors Society. In this article, I discuss what were, for me, the unexpected influences behind the creation of the Wonderground Map and its innovative features, concluding with illustrations of subsequent “wonder maps” from around the world. Copies of the Journal can be purchased from the IMCOS website at
www.imcos.org. Pictured below is a sampling of these Gill-influenced maps.
If you find yourself falling under the spell of pictorial maps,
click here to sign up for my pictorial maps listing (a brief catalog that I will email on an occasional basis). I look forward to receiving
your particular interests in this field and comments on my article and any information you can share on the artists and publishers behind these striking images which provide such an entertaining glimpse into our past.
Email me if you would like to be informed when a particular map displayed below is available for sale.
Click here to view a selection of our pictorial maps
This is a section of the Wonderground Map, showing some of its distinctive characteristics including the "speech bubbles."
Colour of an Old City. A Map of Boston Decorative and Historical. Designed by Edwin Olsen and Blake Clark, published by Houghton Mifflin 1926. Color pictographic / pictorial map, 28 x 37 inches on sheet size 28 1/4 x 37 1/2 folding as issued to 9 1/2 x 12 3/4 into color pictorial envelope.
Edwin Olsen and Blake Clark (illus).
A Kite View of Philadelphia and the Sesqui Centennial International Exposition. (Envelope title: This is a Section of the Map of Philadelphia Contained in this Envelope Size 28 1/2 x 37 1/2 inches). Color pictographic / pictorial map on sheet 28 1/2 x 37 3/4 inches, folding as issued into a color pictorial envelope 10 1/2 x 13 1/2 inches. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1926.
Edwin Olsen and Blake Clark (illus).
Map of the City of Washington in the District of Columbia shewing the Architecture and History from the Most Ancient Times Down to the Present. Cover title: The Capital Map.
Color pictographic / pictorial map 27 3/4 x 36 1/2 inches on sheet size 28 x 36 3/4 folding as issued to 12 1/4 x 9 1/2 into color pictorial envelope. Houghton Mifflin Co. Boston. 1926.
39375 Farrow, C.V. (illus).
A Map of the Wondrous Isle of Manhattan (The Scale is all Askew). Cover title: A Map of the Wondrous Isle of Manhattan. Color pictographic / pictorial map, 24 1/4 x 39 inches on sheet size 25 x 39 3/4 inches folding as issued to 10 x 12 3/4 into color pictorial envelope. Fuessle & Coleman. New York. 1926. On envelope: Published by the Washington Square Book Shop.
The Sydney Harbour Bridge Map. 28 1/2 x 38 inches. John Sands. Sydney. No date. Ca. 1932. This map was designed and drawn by Russell Sydney Lloyd of Bondi, Sydney; figures were drawn by Miss Vic (?) Cowdroy. Printed by John Sands, Pruitt Street, Sydney. Commemorates the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge on March 19th, 1932. Printed around border: Breathes There A Man With Soul So Dead Who Never To Himself Hath Said "This is My Own, My Native Land."? If Such There Be, Go Mark Him Well!. (Sir Walter Scott)
American illustrator Frank McIntosh designed a series of stunning Art Deco covers for Asia magazine in the 1920s and 1930s. We are lucky to be able to offer several years of these magazines, complete with the fascinating articles on all areas of travel in Asia that they contain, as well as some individual issues.
Click here to view the twelve covers for 1930. This year of complete issues is available for $425. Below are two other years; please click on the Vintage Magazines icon at the top of this page and view other issues in the Asia section.
Asia. 1931 - 01 through 1931 - 12. COMPLETE YEAR.
MCINTOSH, FRANK) Buck, Pearl S.; et al.
RRP: $365.00
12 issues of the magazine, January through December 1931, black and white illustrations and ads throughout, a few color ads, 811pp, 12 x 9 1/4 inches. Light wear and toning to edge of a few covers (but overall very displayable), interiors in very goo
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We have a fun selection of pictorial maps used for purposes and in places a little out of the usual, and reflecting the intrinsic importance of maps to the human psyche: not only do we use them to provide directions, but to tell us, in ways big and small, about the world around us and how we relate to that world. Arbuckle Coffee trade cards were an advertising sensation at the end of the 1800s, included in packets of Arbuckle Coffee; there were many different sets issued, but two particularly popular sets were the 50 card sets of the United States and of foreign countries, both of which were also issued by the company in atlas form. We have examples of other unusual cartographic items: old sheet music from 1904, a vintage crate label and postcard from the 1950s, a Florida tablecloth (a mere hint at all the other cloth items on which maps appeared, including scarves and ties), menus and the cover of a World War I women's magazine with a mother and child poring over a map of the European Front. Take a look at
Carto-Maine-ia: Puzzles and Wraps and Oddball Maps a 1999 exhibition of similar items held at the Osher Map Library of the University of Maine, where you will find the exhortation to save and collect similar items. A sentiment we thoroughly endorse!
Collecting Paper Ephemera with Maps
If you're a map lover and haven't considered this type of cartographic publication, please read on!
In the spring 2007 issue of the Journal of the International Map Collectors' Society is an interesting article on the collecting of maps in ephemera (printed material intended to be transient in nature), "Ephemeral Maps?" by University of Texas at Arlington Professor Dennis Reinhartz. Pre 20th century folding maps have long been collected, but it is only recently that attention has grown in the area of collecting 20th century map ephemera, an area in which oldimprints.com specialises. Ironically, often regarded as common, cheap items, because they were meant to be used and discarded they are now often much harder to find than many 19th century atlas maps. Unlike atlas maps, which were part of a larger item, the travel brochures, railroad timetables, cruise line advertising booklets etc, which dominate the area of maps in ephemera, were issued as intrinsic entities with a purpose and character of their own, reflecting the attitudes and mores of the day and are thus an incredibly rich resource for the research of popular and political culture. Or just a lot of fun to look through! One way or another, I hope that you will enjoy our new listing of ephemera (mostly with maps, plus some interesting merchandise catalogs). You may wish to
sign up for one of our email notification of newly catalogued ephemera.
This pictorial map of Florida featured in the New York Times in February 2007 demonstrates the ongoing popular appeal of pictorial or pictographic maps; they are eyecatching, fun, easy to read and can be packed with information (in this case how snow birds tend to "settle in clumps" in Florida based on where they are coming from). Pictorial maps are one of our specialties, combining as the best of them do geographical and historical information with striking graphics - and making very clear a feature of all maps, often obscured, that the "facts" may be manipulated (a "must-read" book dealing with this topic is "How to Lie with Maps" by Mark Monmonier).
Take a look at our vintage pictorial maps of the United States including maps from "A Gay Geography" published in the mid 1930s. These are colorful and entertaining pictures of the economic and social life of each state by the talented and prolific illustrator Ruth Taylor White, albeit with a decidedly dated attitude (or so may be hoped) of racial stereotyping. Ruth Taylor White is probably best known for her cartographs of Hawaii, also in the style of the pictorial maps here, but also did pictorial maps in a more sophisticated style, such as her Wine Map of California and a pictorial map of the Philippine Islands.
