aldercopse

antique folding & pocket maps

Email:   oldfoldingmaps@gmail.com

Tel: +44 (0) 7913 383346

Good stories don’t just come in books. London’s story is written in its maps.

There are over 400 maps of London produced between the late 16th century and 1850. Virtually all of them are very scarce.  If you look closely, each map tells its own real life unique story of era’s gone by and illustrate that many of the problems facing Londoner’s in the 1730’s are still concerns of Londoner’s today. For instance, Homann’s map below depicts the area of high congestion in central London in 1736.

Although some are rare, antique maps in general are fairly readily obtained.  However folding maps laid on cloth were practical items made for use on the open road and as a result they had a hard life and their mortality rate was very high. They were also very expensive. For example, Assheton's map of Palestine (below) an extremely rare map, cost £1 16 shillings (£1.80) when issued in the 1820's. Even by  1850 around 98% of the population earned less than  £3

a week and the average wage was less than 10 shillings (50p). So basing inflation on the average wage this map would have originally cost somewhere  in the region of £1400.  It follows that being affordable to only a very few most folding maps were not produced in large numbers. Therefore original folding maps are very scarce and valuable and many are once again out of reach to peoples pockets.

We ran a gallery for over 30 years dealing in, amongst other things, antique maps. Folding maps became a passion  but it became increasingly difficult to source enough to meet demand. The fact that after having found one we were reluctant to sell it turned us from dealers to collectors and the originals of all the maps you see remain in our possession. Our thoughts then turned to reproducing them. It has taken a number of years to learn the processes that were necessary to make our maps as close to, and as beautiful as, the originals but we feel we have now achieved this goal.

   All our maps are individually hand laid on cloth - we even make the glue to lay them down to old recipes. Our frames are made from mouldings that we produce ourselves. Some are veneered using woods such as Birds Eye Maple and Indian Laurel, this being hand laid in the traditional way. We now have folding maps not only of London but all over the world.

Home                   browse small maps                   browse medium maps                browse large maps

If you would like to read about us please click here.Our workshop is based in Buckinghamshire and if

you would like to see the maps in person please visit us at one of the monthly antique fairs that we attend. See press release