Jonathan Potter Limited is delighted to be exhibiting a number of important, decorative and unusual atlas titlepages at our New Bond Street gallery.  The exhibition is open Monday to Friday from 10am until 6pm and will run into early June - do please visit us when you are in London.

The titlepages are also offered for sale via our website at http://www.jpmaps.co.uk/maps/titles

 

Our selection of more than 100 items covers a period from the sixteenth to the late nineteenth century and includes important works by many of the major mapmakers.  These titlepages and frontispieces had appeared at the beginning of atlases and geographical works as a means of enticing the reader into the volume.  They were intended to offer an encapsulating glimpse of the world depicted on the pages of the atlas beyond, a world that was often new and exciting to the reader during the great periods of exploration and discovery, and can combine the practical publication details of the volume with allegorical illustration and political commentary.  The titlepages can complement almost any thematic collection or can stand alone as works of art in their own right.

 

We welcomed esteemed cartographic author Rodney Shirley to the gallery yesterday evening, Thursday May 21st, to formally open the exhibition and to discuss his new publication; Courtiers and Cannibals, Angels and Amazons - The Art Of The Decorative Cartographic Titlepage - please see http://www.jpmaps.co.uk/featuredbook to order your copy of the book.  Guests enjoyed a glass of wine whilst enjoying the titlepages on display and were also pleased to chat with Tom Harper of the British Library who has contributed a most interesting article to accompany our exhibition - the text may be found in full on our website at http://www.jpmaps.co.uk/showcase