UV Damage

This blog is about the restoration of the Atlas, which makes us focus on things that are wrong with it. It is easy to forget that the state of the bound maps is actually very, very good. If the maps had not been bound into a volume and stored in the dark, but hung on a wall instead, the damage done by UV-light would have been incomparably worse to whatever dirt and small tears there are now.

I think a fantastic example of why we are so lucky to have the Atlas, is when you compare these two maps of 'T Hooghe Heymraedtschap vanden Lande van Woerden. The 'Hoogheemraadschap' is the organization responsible for the dikes and polders around the town of Woerden. Both maps are in possession of the University of Amsterdam.

The map on top is from 1739. It was printed 15 years after the map at the bottom whose 9 sheets were bound in an volume of the Atlas der Neederlanden. Apart from some coats of arms on the sides, they are identical. The top map has adorned a wall for almost 200 years. It is the kind of map that makes you say: wow, you can tell it is really really old.'

The 9 sheets of the bottom map that have been stored in the Atlas der Neederlanden still have beautiful colors. It looks like they were was printed yesterday. And as the sheets have all been digitized (not on the highest resolution, or the best quality yet, that will be done after the restoration has been completed, but still, in pretty good quality) we can join them in Photoshop and look at the map the way it was intended.

The scale of this map is approximately 1:17.000, and it was made by Johannes, Justus and Davidt Vingboons. The content dates from 1670. The printing technique is copperplate. Them map consists of 9 sheets, each 43 x 53 cm. The size of the whole map is 129 x 159 cm. It was hand-colored, and surrounded by the coats of arms of the dike reeves: Willem van der Hoeven, Jacob vander Meer, Adriaen Jacob vander Does, Cornelis Jan van Nellesteyn, Cornelis van Ewyck, Gerard Beelaerts, and Joan George Stierling.