Cartography Stamps Captivate Collectors

Spain has just issued two captivating cartography stamps. Fascinating in their detail, the stamps are engrossing studies of the fine art of mapmaking. Click the post title for details and to order.

Now made by computers with unassailable accuracy, maps used to be drawn by hand using pen and paper. Maps were drawn well before words were put to paper. The earliest know map, a wall painting in the ancient Turkish city of Catal Huyuk, is nearly 8,000 years old.

Early mapmakers were flagrant plagiarizers, generally copying material from colleagues without noting the source. Given the difficulty of physically verifying distances and features, errors were often republished for years, even decades, before being discovered (probably by some very irritated and frustrated traveller who had been sent miles out of his way by some errant mapmaker)! The first maps were more works of art than precise recordings of topography. Drawn with brushes and inks on parchment, mapmakers added fanciful embellishments to indicate features or unknowns. Dragons might straddle mountains and fierce sea creatures inhabit the oceans.

County Stamp Center has a wealth of interesting and unusual stamps. Visit our website to explore our vast collections. We sell quality collecting supplies too. Come to County Stamp Center for all your philatelic needs.