What is in this collection
World maps engraved between the 1570s and the 1790s: Ortelius and the first modern atlas, the Augsburg workshops of the eighteenth century, and the English chart makers who redrew the Pacific after Cook came home. Double hemispheres, oval projections, cartouches and sea monsters — the world as it was actually printed, at the moment it was printed, before the empty places were filled in.
How to choose
By century, if you are after a particular look: sixteenth-century sheets are sparse, speculative and boldly cut; eighteenth-century sheets are finer, denser and far more accurate along the coasts. By cartographer, if a name means something to you. Or simply by what the map shows — how Australia is drawn, whether California is an island, where Terra Australis still sits at the bottom of the world.
What you get
Each map is delivered as six separate downloads, so you take only the shape your frame needs: the full sheet with its margins, a version trimmed to the plate border, and four crops — 3:2, 4:3, 5:4 and ISO A. Every download is a ZIP holding one JPEG at 300 dpi in sRGB, the restoration passport as a PDF, and a short read-me. The maximum print size is calculated from the resolution of the original scan, never from the upscale, and it is stated on each map's own page.
Restoration
Every map is a scan of a real sheet held in a named archive — library, shelfmark and year, all stated. Nothing generated, nothing redrawn. What we take out is the stains, the dirt and the scanner cast. What we leave in is the grain of the paper, the hand colour and the line exactly as the copper plate printed it.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly do I get after payment?
Six separate downloads of the same map: the full sheet with its margins, a version trimmed to the plate border, and four crops — 3:2, 4:3, 5:4 and ISO A. Each download is a ZIP holding one JPEG at 300 dpi in sRGB, the restoration passport as a PDF, and a short read-me. You take them from your account, up to five times within 30 days.
How large can I print it?
The maximum print size is stated on each map's own page. It is calculated from the resolution of the original scan at 300 dpi, never from the upscale — so the figure is what the sheet actually holds.
Where can I print it?
A home printer handles the smaller crops; a local print shop handles the large ones. The files are sRGB with the profile embedded, at 300 dpi, in standard frame proportions, so any print service can take them as they are. The read-me covers paper and sizing.
Is this a real antique map or a generated one?
Every map is a scan of a real sheet held in a named archive — library, shelfmark and year, all stated. Nothing generated, nothing redrawn. The restoration passport is open before you buy: it names the source and lists what was done to the sheet and what was not.
Can I use it commercially?
The personal licence comes with every map: print it, frame it, hang it at home or in the office. Use in something you sell — a product, a publication, printed goods — needs the commercial licence, which is available separately — see the Licence page.
How does a sixteenth-century world map differ from an eighteenth-century one?
Mostly in what the mapmaker knew and how he cut the plate. Sixteenth-century sheets are sparse and boldly engraved, with whole coastlines guessed at and a southern continent invented to balance the globe. Eighteenth-century sheets are denser and finer, and the coasts are surveyed rather than imagined — the blank spaces are labelled as blank instead of being filled with monsters.
Why is California drawn as an island on some old maps?
Because for about 130 years the best available report said it was. A Spanish account of 1602 was read that way, the shape entered the atlases around 1622, and it stayed there until surveys pushed it out in the 1750s — long after it was known to be wrong. Where a sheet shows it, that is said on the map's own page.