Lisette started her professional career as a librarian at the Royal Library of Belgium way back in 1954, hardly a year after obtaining her M.A. degree in geography from the Université libre de Bruxelles. But it was 1969 before she entered the Map Room. By then she had already participated in various projects relating to the history of cartography and had published notable contributions in this field. In 1958, within the framework of the Brussels World Fair, she was responsible for the exhibition Brussel in kaart en beeld | Image de Bruxelles - Cartes et plans [Brussels in maps and images] and in 1965 she helped Antoine De Smet, the then head of the Map Room, to organise the exhibition on Dutch cartography. In 1967-68, she curated a second exhibition on city maps, with maps not only of Brussels but also of 18 other Belgian cities. Both exhibitions announced what would be the focus of her research: the attentive scrutiny and description of the cartographic document.
Lisette Danckaert at the KBR in October 2006
In 1968 she published her fundamental work on the topography of Brussels: L'évolution territoriale de Bruxelles. La cartographie de 1550 à 1840 (Bruxelles, Arcade, 1968), which would form the basis for her bestseller 21 years later, Bruxelles. Cinq siècles de cartographie (Tielt, Lannoo; Knokke, Mappamundi, 1989).
In 1974 Lisette took over from Antoine De Smet as Head of the Map Room and Secretary-General of the National Centre for the History of Sciences (NCHS) which was housed in the Map Room. For the NCHS she published a selection of scientific contributions by Antoine De Smet on the history of Dutch cartography. Three years later, in 1977, under the umbrella of the 25th anniversary of the IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) she mounted the exhibition Belgica in Orbe. It washer last major initiative in the field as an administrator with all attendant responsibilities; the care of her readers and personnel, and the collection, required her full attention. Lisette knew her collection as no other and was thus able to identify important gaps and to acquire significant documents. She had a special penchant for modern cartography, e.g. the maps of the British Admiralty.
Lisette was only 60 when she left the Library. But even if she no longer directed the Map Room, she continued as before to participate in conferences, occasionally presenting a paper (which she wasn’t really fond of), and contributing small but precious pearls of scientific research. In October 2006 she was honoured at the Royal Library of Belgium on the occasion of her 75th birthday with a liber amicorum entitled Margaritae cartographicae Studia Lisette Danckaert 75 um diem natalem agenti oblata, edited by Wouter Bracke, who inserted the 18 pages of her bibliography. The book contains, among others, an article by Monique Pelletier.
Lisette Danckaert
In December 1998 she participated in the Ortelius Conference, the first event of the newly founded BIMCC, today the Brussels Map Circle. She joined the Circle in November 1999 and its Executive Committee in December 1999. She became our scientific advisor in 2003, a post she held until end 2014 when Wouter Bracke took over. Over the years, she made numerous contributions to our Conferences, Study sessions and publications (starting with an article in BIMCC Newsletter No 5, September 1999). In particular, she was a member of the Editorial Committee and proof-read with a very sharp eye all contributions for publication in the Circle’s Newsletter/magazine. At the beginning of this year, although she was in constant pain in her room at Clinique Saint-Michel, she still reviewed the January issue of Maps in History. Lisette would have been 90 at the end of May 2020.
She will be missed by friends and colleagues.
Following COVID-19, we recommend that our visitors check with the organizers prior to any exhibition visit and / or any participation in an event to find out if it has not been canceled.
This issue of ICA News introduces the new Executive Committee and the most recent recipients of the ICA Awards. It contains a number of reports, photos and statistics from ICC 2019 held in Tokyo and invites us to Florence in 2021.
Read more.
A spectacular video-clip has been produced by the Malta Map Society to show how the early representations of the Maltese archipelago changed and morphed over the ages.
Read more
Why North is Up: Map Conventions and Where They
Came From
La géographie de la Renaissance [Renaissance Geography]
Atlas militaires manuscrits (XVIIe - XVIIIe siècles) Villes et territoires des ingénieurs du roi [Manuscript military atlases (17th - 18th centuries), Cities and territories of the King’s engineers]
History and Cartography
The AfricaMuseum's largest maps of the Congo
Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille: Pioneer of scientific
cartography in Southern Africa
How I got into Carthography
Interview with Sabrina Guerra
Brussels Map Circle news
Conference - Mapping Africa
2020 Programme
International news
Symposium on Globes in Zurich.
The Malta Map Society celebrates its
10thanniversary in style
Depuis 2019, la bibliothèque municipale du Havre conserve dans ses réserves un nouveau trésor, qui n’est pas sans rapport avec la cartographie : le manuscrit de navigation du marin havrais Jean-Baptiste Le Grip (1762). Ce grand et épais in-folio de plus de 30 cm, relié en veau retourné (suède), est composé de 358 pages couvertes d’une écriture serrée à l’encre brune, enrichies de 140 illustrations (dont 7 planches dépliantes), 6 volvelles (disques mobiles en papier pivotant les uns sur les autres destinés à simplifier les calculs d’événements cycliques) et d’une vue de navire de guerre. Les dernières pages sont consacrées à l’art de dresser une carte.
Source and more details on https://cartogallica.hypotheses.org/2200.
On 14 May 1940, the building of the State Archives in Mons was hit by German incendiary bombs aimed at the railway station. Two-thirds of the archives were destroyed by the flames, mostly Old Regime documents. One of the few funds that escaped the disaster is the cartographic collection. If the scanning of these maps and plans has been finalized for some time, they are now also available via Cartesius where they can be viewed online.
Discover, for example, this detail of the city of Braine-le-Comte in 1587 (Archives of the State in Mons, Maps and Plans, II, 1043), taken from a map drawn up in the framework of a trial between the chapter of Sainte-Waudru de Mons and the chapter of Salle-le-Comte in Valenciennes, concerning tithes for the Council of Hainaut. The archives of the Council are lost, but the maps extracted from the files have been preserved.
Via Cartesius, you can consult famous maps or not. Recently, the State Archives have downloaded, in addition to the collection of Maps and Plans of AE Mons, the following collections:
a large part of the maps and plans of the series II of the General Archives of the Kingdom
cards selling national goods
the cards of the general notary of Brabant
the atlas of the Ter Duinen abbey (whose originals are kept at the Grand Séminaire de Bruges).
State of the question: For the moment, the State Archives have put via Cartesius a little over 40 000 online cards, including about 23 000 maps of the cadastre.
Source: Read more.
