Description
Vintage hand colored map of Georgia & Alabama from 1861. (See further below in description for more detailed information & history of these maps.) These maps were taken from a Johnson's Family Atlas that was beyond repair. We salvaged these amazing works of art, which are now ready to be part of your story! This map measures roughly 26 inches wide & 18 inches tall. This map was a full spread on the book, so it has a natural crease in the middle. Please reference photographs in listing for condition details on each map. Maps have slight darkening from age & damp stains. Maps may have small tears, chips or folding. Any large tears have been repaired with acid-free, archival tape. Alvin Jewett Johnson (1827-1884) was an American publisher noted for his fine atlases. in 1860 his firm published its first large atlas under the title "Johnson's New Illustrated Family Atlas of the World". Johnson's atlas is noted for the fine engraving, attention to detail, & hand-colored maps. They are large in size, with the original book measuring 18 inches high by 14 inches wide. in the United States in the nineteenth century many people obtained their knowledge & information about the world through globes, maps & atlases. There were a number of prominent atlas publishers during this time period besides Johnson, including Samuel Augustus Mitchell (Mitchell's New General Atlas), George Cram (Cram's Universal Atlas) & Joseph Colton (Colton's Atlas of the World). The maps offered for sale currently in our Etsy shop are from the 1861 edition of Johnson's Atlas. We recently acquired the extensive book collection (over 20,000 books) of a geography professor who was a life-long book & map collector & our long-time customer & friend. Included in this book collection were several editions of "Johnson's New Illustrated Family Atlas of the World" from the early 1860's. One of these books was severely worn & incomplete, with broken binding. As a rule I don't break up books with illustrations or maps, but because this book was already incomplete & had a broken binding, we decided to pull the maps & sell them individually in our shop. These maps are all hand-colored, meaning that the publishing firm hired workers to apply watercolors by hand-painting to each of the engraved maps. The borders are usually done in thicker red, while many of the counties & regions are shaded in various light pastel colors. Hand-coloring was a laborious process, but the end result is a true vintage work of art. One of the features of hand-coloring which makes it so distinctive is the slightly uneven watercolor paint lines along the borders of the countries or states. If you look closely you can see small areas where the watercolor was applied heavier than other areas, & it has bled outside the lines a bit. One can imagine the hand-coloring technician carefully drawing a small paint brush across the borders & doing their best to keep it within the lines. These are authentic original maps from the 1861
