Wall TapestriesWorld Map Tapestries

World Map Tapestry: How To Decorate With World Maps

The world map tapestries are a very popular series of wall tapestries.
Here we have two new world map tapestries in our catalog.
They are “A new and accurate map” and “Antique map geographica”.

Antique Map Geographica old world map tapestry

Antique Map Geographica Tapestry

Old world map tapestries and wall hangings from the 16th, 17th and 18th century are real stunners when it comes to wall hangings.
They are a combination of history and art all in the one work.
You may have heard that the scientists of centuries ago thought that the world was flat, until discoveries on the seas proved that this was not the case as shown by Columbus.
Or was this the case?

The “Flat Earth Myth” was invented after scholars (and everyone else) knew the earth was spherical!

However, the story of the flat earth and world map is not that clear.
The ancient Greek scholars thought the world was flat, but by the Middle Ages and the 14th century, scholars of the time thought the world was spherical. The source of the flat earth theory was unclear and perhaps was related to artistic impressions.
For example, in the famous work The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch from 1490, a beautiful disc shaped earth is seen in the midst of a translucent sphere in the outer panels depicting the creation of earth itself.

world map by bosch

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, courtesy of wikipedia

But this perhaps was just art?
Historian Jeffrey Burton Russell states that with few exceptions, “no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat”. He believed that the flat earth theory was part of a story to “impugn” less modern civilizations.

Columbus discovered America by a miscalculation (he really was going after Japan)?

The real issue in the 14th century was not that the earth was flat, but the distances from continent to continent.
Columbus mistook a shorter length for a degree namely the Italian mile of 1480 metres instead of the longer Arabic mile of 2177 metres.  As a result, he underestimated the distance of his infamous proposed voyage to Japan to be 25% of the true distance of over 20 000 metres.

The Copernican System world map tapestry

The Copernican System

For a small ship of his day of around 67 feet long and carrying 90 men, he and his crew would not have had enough supplies to survive the trip. However, when he “unexpectedly” bumped into America at the point where he thought Japan was going to be, which saved his life and the lives of his crew.
It is thought that the theory that the earth was spherical came originally from Parmenides in the 5th century and Pythagoras in the 6th.
The circumference of the earth was thought to be first estimated by around 240 BC by Eratosthenes who looked at the distance between two cities in Egypt and the difference in the angles of the shadows cast in these cities, and from there estimated the circumference of the world.
Hence it was thought very early on that the world was spherical.
With the discovery of new land by ships, the need for world maps evolved quickly.

Enter the World Map tapestries: The first ever one was created by a “visionary”?

Map of East Indies

See World Map tapestries here.

As the science of cartography grew along with the increasing discoveries by seas, including the discovery of the Americas by Columbus, tapestry making turned to the topic of world maps.
These old world map tapestry pieces are a revelation in terms of the ancient conception of how the world was constructed.
The first modern atlases came from this period in time.
Which was the first ever modern atlas?
It was Abraham Ortelius who created the first modern atlas called “Theatre of the World” in May 20th 1570, in Antwerp.
With the heading of “Typus Orbis Terrarum” the world map consists of a pretty accurate rendition of the world.
The work consisted of both the world map as well as 53 full color maps.
It went underwent 35 revisions in his lifetime.
This is the tapestry of his map here:

world map tapestry image

Typus Orbis Terrarum World Map II Tapestry

Was he a visionary?
Ortelius was the first person to have proposed the idea that the continents were perhaps joined before they drifted to their present locations.
This theory was proved correct centuries later.

“New” old world map tapestry works to bind our imagination

As mentioned, there are two new works out in the world of world map tapestries.
These are pieces which have a combination of cartography from the 17th century and art.
The first is A New and Accurate Map of the World, first published in 1676 in London as a part of the first English atlas of the world.
As with the world maps since its inception in the 16th century, these newer old world maps continues the convention of art and science.
As you can see, the top of the United States and Canada, as is Australia is incomplete and to an extent unknown.

a new and accurate world map

A New And Accurate Map Tapestry

The second is a world map by Dutch cartographer Jan Janssonius from Anheim, created around 1630.
The atlases he published with his brother Henricus Hondius, named the Hondius Atlas grew from three to eventually eleven volumes. His maps were often compared to that of his rival cartographer Willem Blaeu, but many of his works came out first.
His maps included maps of cities, maps of the waterworld, maps of the ancient world – over 60 of them, and maps of the heavens (celestial cartography).
Janssonius’ maps are scientifically rigorous, but filled with art.
The heavens above with creatures not of the earth, as well as more grounded yet still myth inspired images of harp players and water nymphs below on earth:

Antique Map Geographica Tapestry image

Antique Map Geographica Tapestry

The upper Americas are a little more complete and this map is one of the first maps in history to show any part of Australia, in this case the northern section discovered by Jan Castenzs around 1623.
In fact, two major continents were still labelled as in cognita in this work.

Conclusion

World maps and world map tapestry wall hangings are dependent on the acceptance that the earth was spherical, as well as the discoveries of new continents by explorers.
With world map tapestries, we have scholarly acceptance of the spherical earth,confirmed by explorers and depicted by cartographers.
And we have the uncanny inaccuracy of Columbus which lead to discoveries of large continents almost by accident, by which the event saved his life.
Such is the way of science!
So go ahead and transform your room or home with the art of cartographers, which are pieces of historical art and interest in their own right.
Their scientific and historical value, coupled with the artistry of the times makes them unique works of art.
Balanced by the imagination of art, these world maps are a culmination of what people had to have gone through in order to have produced these world map tapestries we’re able to see today.

2 thoughts on “World Map Tapestry: How To Decorate With World Maps

  1. Columbus wasn’t actually the first to discover America, the Vikings got there before him. According the Viking Saga’s, Leif Ericsson found he New World back in1000 AD, much of it has been confirmed by archeologists, he stated;
    “Now sailed they thence into the open sea with a northeast wind, and were two days at sea before they saw land, and they sailed thither and came to an island which lay to the eastward of the land, and went up there and looked round them in good weather, and observed that there was dew upon the grass.
    And it so happened that they touched the dew with their hands, and raised the fingers to the mouth, and they thought that they had never before tasted anything so sweet. After that they went to the ship and sailed into a sound which lay between the island and a promontory which ran out to the eastward of the land, and then steered westward past the promontory. It was very shallow at ebb tide, and their ship stood up so that it was far to see from the ship to the water.
    But so much did they desire to land that they did not give themselves time to wait until the water again rose under their ship, but ran at once on shore at a place where a river flows out of a lake. But so soon as the waters rose up under the ship, then took the boats, and rowed to the ship, and floated it up the river, and thence into the lake, and there cast anchor, and brought up from the ship their skin cots, and made there booths”.
    primarysourcebook.com/medieval/the-viking-discovery-of-america

  2. Hi Auron,
    Thank you for that clarifying piece of information! It is interesting how there are layers of information and history passed on to us that ignore or don’t mention other related history! Leif Ericsson from Greenland is the discoverer and maybe there was someone else before him that was never recorded and which we’ll never know?

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