Brussels International
Map Collectors' Circle
Collège Saint-Michel, Brussels, 13 December 2003
BIMCC Chairman, Wulf Bodenstein, welcomed some 50 map enthusiasts for this study session devoted to yet another aspect of cartography. The session was chaired by Francis Herbert, from the Royal Geographical Society in London; he introduced each speaker and contributed to their subject by showing one map carefully selected from the RGS library.
Mr Richard Domb shared his 50 years passion for maps of the Holy Land with the audience; his presentation of the Centre of the World - Jerusalem covered over 1500 years of town plans and views, including many beautiful, early presentations of the Holy City, where faith and pedagogy played a greater role than realism; he examined the relationship between fantasy and reality in these representations and how it evolved through the history of Jerusalem.
Dr Charles van den Heuvel, map curator of the University Library of Leiden (NL), presented The use and re-use of fortification plans of the Low Countries in maps, atlases and treatises on military architecture (16th and 17th centuries); he first discussed the administrative role of drawings in the planning and construction of fortifications and then focussed on the re-use of such plans. The presentation was illustrated by many maps and views of fortifications at Brussels, Leiden, Madrid, Dresden, Münich, and Wolfenbüttel, drawn, in particular, from the Bodel Nijenhuis Collection of the University of Leiden.
After the coffee break which was an opportunity for informal exchanges between map amateurs and professionals, Mr Hans-Uli Feldmann, Chief cartographer at the Swiss Federal Office of Topography (1) in Bern, spoke about The Schauenburg Collection; this comprises a series of 67 manuscript 17th and 18th centuries maps that were of strategic importance and were kept secret, until they fell into General Schauenburg's possession when he conquered Bern in 1798 … The traditional slides presentation was complemented by a video projection to demonstrate a newly published CD-ROM, which features a powerful tool to display a series of maps by Dufour (second half of the 19th century), showing clearly the growth of cities like Bern or Zurich.
The morning session was concluded by an aperitif offered by the BIMCC — another opportunity for exchanges, and for browsing a few interesting maps selected from members private collections — and most of the participants then joined the BIMCC Committee who treated the speakers to lunch at a nice nearby restaurant.
Dr Nick Millea, Map Librarian at the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, showed the evolution of town plans as a cartographic genre through the example of Town plans of Oxford selected from the Bodleian Library; he highlighted that map representation depended not only on the cartographic techniques available, which evolved considerably since the Agas's 16th century map of the university city, but also on the intents of the author regarding his intended audience.
Mr Piet Lombaerde, professor at the Higher Institute of Architectural Science in Antwerp, presented a well documented and illustrated view of the evolution of The fortifications of Antwerp from the 16th until the 19th century; he highlighted the various influences which contributed to the complex history of the city fortifications, from the improvements brought by Albrecht Dürer to the medieval walls, through the Italian design of the Spanish walls and the initiative by Vauban to extend the system to the left bank of the Schelde river, until the story of the Belgian national réduit.
by Jean-Louis Renteux
(1) Also Chief editor of Cartographica Helvetica and President of the Swiss Society of Cartography