Walking Contours

The Parallel Roads of Glen Roy

Roughly 325metres above sea level, all around Glen Roy, nature has etched out a contour line. There’s another just above it at 350m, plus one further down the flanks of the Glen. The lines are so remarkable they were initially considered to be the work of (mythical) men intent on purposes unknown. It took much conjecture and debate in the 1800s (even Charles Darwin weighed in) before the nature of the lines’ ice age construction was finally figured out. 

Robert Dawson, drawings of stones as hills, Image courtesy of The National Archives (TNA)

As life-size emulations of the contour model hills that cadets – as taught by Robert Dawson – learned to draw from, I was keen to visit ‘the parallel roads of Glen Roy’. Last week a friend and I climbed to the middle ‘road’ and walked the contour as far as we could. In the distance, on the other side and towards the head of the Glen, horizontal lines scored the landscape. They are so distinct I had expected to find something akin to a track to follow, not so, our ‘road’ was obscured by waist-high bracken so that neither notional path, nor even our feet, were visible as we stumbled along.

place, map and mark making coincide

My previous post mulled on the appearance of contours and the difficulty I’d had in drawing a contour line as just that: a uniform line. Contour lines on maps are essentially a diagrammatic abstraction, yet like both my drawing attempts and Illuminated contours, the ‘roads’ appeared embellished; pricked out in hues of paler green, or fawn, as they circled the heather and bracken-decked Glen. 

OS Map of the Parallel Roads with benchmarks (detail), courtesy of National Library of Scotland Map Library

Armed with both current and historical OS maps there was much pausing for perusal and then to drink in the view. The oldest map I chose was for the benchmarks that appeared to stud the ‘roads’. Most of the rocks likely to have been scratched by a surveyor’s chisel were too heavily clad in lichen and mosses for a proper inspection. Only one appeared distinct enough to elicit that pleasing sensation of map, mark and precise location bound together in place and time. It heralded a moment of contemplation, firstly of all the renowned men of science who, in the 1800s, walked here before us as they formulated theories and surveyed; then those men of commerce in the 1950s who desired to obliterate the ‘roads’ under a vast Forestry Commission plantation, and finally the tourists, those of us in need of a summer holiday who have headed to Scotland in droves this summer. But where were they? Snagged round the corner on Ben Nevis? We saw not one other soul out walking the ‘roads’. I’m not complaining, but to have such a spectacular and unique swathe of Scotland all to ourselves did seem rather extravagant.

A track on the way back out of the Glen. Not a parallel road, though I’d assumed they’d look like this!

Shading the land of perpetual evening sun

Shading in the shade

Often a timestamp appears to be imprinted onto maps, telling us a time of day, rather than date. It is of course a lie (born of a convention). Hills and trees were drawn onto maps with the long evening shadows of a setting sun. 

Thomas Budgen, OSD 177, Llantriant, 1811, courtesy of British Library maps online (detail)

 Maps followed figure drawing conventions: the body positioned so that a light source is in front and to the left to avoid the drawing hand casting a shadow where they drew. As north appears at the top of the map, so shadows were drawn with a notional light source “from the left extremity of the top of the drawing downwards”.^[1]This convenience for right-handers – to avoid casting a shadow upon the drawing – leaves me, and other left-handers, in the dark! Though even in my grandma’s day, left-handedness was frowned on, she had to learn to write and draw with her right hand. 

R. K. Dawson, Essays towards the expression of Ground 1815-16 (detail). Courtesy of the British Library

As contours lines, and other innovations, came into play the shadow convention was rocked. The planimetric God’s eye view would suggest that only the crown of the tree appears – no trunk, no shadow ­– with ‘sun’ at perpetual midday, a view considered by some as “essentially imaginary or abstract in concept”.^[2] Although overhead, overall, lighting was seen by some as ‘more correct’ for maps, others found that ‘less talented artists’ who attempted slopes with “no light or dark sides” caused “a monotonous effect” upon their maps.^[3]

OS sheet 53, Lancashire, 6”, engraved 1847 (detail). Courtesy of the British Library

The whole shade / no-shade issue resulted in some curious juxtapositions once contour lines began to appear on maps. Contoured hills, devoid of shading, could be dotted with trees that still caught the evening sun. Others insisted the contoured hills should keep their shading, to avoid “pictorial difficulty” they desired contour lines to be limited to faint dots, so as not to “catch the eye unpleasantly”.^[4]

contoured model drawing

Wanting to experience drawing with shadows for myself, I set up shaded models hills in the studio. The shocker was not so much the irritation of the shadow cast by my hand – which was slight as I stood to draw and could move around the sketch – no, what was startling was how impossible it was to then attempt contour lines with an even stroke! The impulse to make lines darker on the shadow side was overwhelming, and however much I fought it, the lines still looked more like Japanese cartographer Kitiro Tanaka’s ‘Illuminated Contours’. I feel I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of shadowy shaded relief. 

shadowy results

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^[1] C. W. Pasley, Course of Instruction; (London: T Egerton, 1813)

^[2] Eduard Imhof, Cartographic Relief Presentation (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1982)

^[3] Frome, Outline of the method of conducting a trigonometrical survey, (London: John Weale, 1840)

^[4] Scott, “Representation of Ground,” in Papers on subjects connected with the duties of the Corps of the Royal Engineers, (Woolwich: W. P. Jackson, 1863)

The appearance of contour lines

I am the proud ‘owner’ of a short piece just published in Imago Mundi. It outlines my PhD (as I understand it at the moment: change is inevitable). And entailed a rather lengthy editing process for such a short piece; rewrites mounted into double figures. Some of my treasured flights of fancy had their wings shorn – which was a shock – though it was a valuable process to have my words re-evaluated by the eagle eyes of an expert editor.

Mr Burr’s model experiments made it through to the finished article, and some of the material from Using Bodies for Contouring also got a ‘walk in’ role (and had a second outing at the weekend!) Some edited highlights from an early draft appear below:

Anon, Ordnance Survey Drawing 44-1 Courtesy of the British Library online

For many military men in the 1800s contour lines were regarded as too difficult to read and the preference was for traditional pictorial vertical lines to denote mountains ^^^. The vertical hachure was considered the ‘natural’ symbol to represent hilly terrain. If contour lines were seen as ‘too abstract’, other more descriptive systems conveyed an artistic vision of the landscape without defining it well enough to accurately plan a campaign: “Terrestrial maps show us the site of the mountains, their sinuosities, … without saying anything of their height. They give us only a mutilated image of the land”.^[1]

Lendy, 1864

Prior to contours, a number of imperfect systems were expounded, explored and trialled; each used hachures, with or without shading, which were often composed using an armature of contour lines that were subsequently removed.^[2] A typical treatise of the time contained these instructions:

By degrees you may lessen the number of horizontal lines, and, at last, work altogether without them, drawing the strokes by eye perpendicularly to imaginary horizontal lines.^[3]

The role of contours on maps was contested throughout the 1800s, and their adoption was piecemeal. Whilst it was evident pictorial methods were deemed ‘easier to read’, at issue was the artistic abilities of the draftsman with regard to repeatability and uniformity of results. As yet more systems were trialled and embellished, the harder it became to actually apply them correctly: “These methods are very ingenious in theory, but fail[ed] most signally when applied in practice, especially in the field”.^[4] In the face of these challenges, contours lines represented a ‘scientific’, repeatable system that did not rely on artistic talent. For the military, another advantage to their adoption – as artillery became more powerful – was the cutting edge precision of contour lines:

what we expect to get from contours is, that knowledge of the ground, that accuracy in estimating slopes, which shall make the artillery officer right about his ranges …^[5]

[1] François de Dainville, Expression des nivellemens (1782).

[2] Yolande, Jones, “Aspects of relief portrayal on 19th century maps,” The Cartographic Journal 11 no.1 (1974)

[3] Gordon and Bedford Smith, An Essay on Military Drawing (1812).

[4] Drayson, Practical Military Surveying (1861).

[5] Marsh, Maj., in Papers on subjects, (1874).

Peak and Chain (stickmen and millipedes)

I get stuck on hills. I spend hours poring over mountains on their paper mates; fingers track, stub and circle notable features as I try to transform their graphic qualities into words. Even as I write, my attention is snagged by Schiehallion: eye height on the wall beside me; it beckons me to journey again across the dense swirl of orange contours that ring its flanks. I am happiest when mountains and hills are set in splendid isolation, rising nobly from whatever plateau below, akin to plinth mounted statue. Like mapmakers of yore, I struggle once individuality is compromised; when one hill merges with the next through a series of ridges. How do we mark their barrier like qualities on a map? How best might land be divvied into connected walls of altitude on the one hand, and pools and parcels of river catchment on the other? It’s a conundrum with long roots back through history.Draughtsmen at work in the early years of the Ordnance Survey reached for myriad options: some chose to furnish interlinking hills with tight and twisting valleys most reminiscent of a ‘cranial cortex’. Thomas Budgen ­veered between rough-barked truncated ‘deer antlers’ for mountainous regions then softened the lines to lend a more rounded tentacle or finger-like appearance to undulating terrain. More commonly chains were announced by the use of ‘millipede legs’ for hachures, or prettier ‘eye lashes’ that were more sparsely drawn than the millipedes. Both these styles left hill summits and valley bottoms blank and relied on the curl of lash or leg to enable us to differentiate high ground from low. Dupain-Triel was a millipede man. In 1782 he created a map of the ‘main chains’ of mountains (millipedes), and principle courses of the rivers of France. Nine years later he eschewed the millipede to produce one of the earliest printed contour maps. It is the same size and outline of France as the earlier map, only this time the ‘different height of its plains’ is foregrounded and the rivers are not nearly as eye catching. Things get strange on a third map printed in 1802: same size again, same outline; only this one is overprinted so that millipedes and dotted contours collide. Like the stopped clock that is correct twice a day, rarely do these two evocations of the mountain chains accord. We desire maps to tell us the truth, but here Dupain-Triel cruelly dashes expectations; all over the map, millipede chains traverse contours lines in a confusion of impossible highs and lows worthy of an Escher.There is one final ‘map of chains’ that has won a place in my heart. Here the paper is strewn with orange stickmen who have joined hands or lost legs, their waists and shoulder joints marked by spot heighted triangles. Rivers systems snake between them in blue while black dotted paths follow their courses before – very occasionally – heading directly for an orange leg or arm, then courtesy of a pass marked by a little bridge symbol “=”, cut across the ridge to join the banks of a different river. I was enjoying looking at its refreshing brevity of style while on a visit to the studio of fabulous ‘mountain artist’ Susan Dobson. The style seemed so novel I turned the map over to identify the maker: Robin G. Collomb ed,.

Who was Robin?

He was my best and oldest friend’s dad. Like Susan, he also loved to walk and draw in the mountains, there is now a website dedicated to his wonderful portrayals of high alpine peaks that bear absolutely no resemblance to the stripped back, diagrammatic orange stickmen. It is remarkable how one person can switch between such contrasting styles. I contacted my friend about the map, I’ll finish here with some words from her:

A guy contacted Dad with some dodgily acquired military maps and Dad reproduced them with a lot of letraset ! … I kept a full set. When we cleared out the house there were all the tracing paper originals with the letraset peeling off.

Images 1 & 3. 
J. L. Dupain-Triel, Carte de la France Où l'on a essayé de donner la Configuration de son Territoire, Par une Nouvelle Méthode de Nivellements, 1802. © The British Library Board, Maps 14312.(3.)

Image 2. 
Thomas Budgen, Ordnance Survey Drawing 89-2, Reigate, 1808. 
Courtesy of The British Library, available online:
commons.wikimedia.org

Image 4. 
Robin G. Collomb ed., Indian Himalaya Maps (Leomann Maps, 2006)

Modelling Contours

hills may be imagined as inundated with water, and that every time the water falls…, a mark is run round the surface of the ground at the edge of the water…[1] Paterson, 1882 How do you explain what a contour line is? G. D. Burr’s advice was to “Procure a stone somewhat resembling a hill”[2]secure it in a box, pour in diluted Indian ink, then drain it off at intervals so the stone is marked by a series of tidelines: contour lines. I tried recreating his 1839 experiment, yet however precise some of his instructions were, too many important details were missing: type of stone? Ratio of water to Indian ink? Duration required before reducing the level? Numerous experiments later, the crucial element for guaranteed results is deciphered: leaving the stone overnight between levels. Three years later Basil Jackson described “a very ingenious and striking”[3] adaptation of Burr’s experiment whereby the stone was replaced by “a model in plaster of Paris representing some hilly ground”. From my own trials I know plaster provides an excellent surface for emphasising each ink-stained ring; except in Jackson’s version ink isn’t used, the water is clear and: “At every successive fall of the water, he [Burr] traced lines on the model, indicating the curves shown upon its surface by the successive lowering of the water.” I tried recreating this version too, but ‘tracing’ with a sharp point tended to nudge the model, and ink (and charcoal and graphite) smudged in the water. To draw a steady clean line required a very wide shallow container, preferably on a turntable and a very particular pencil. In some respects, this iteration was an improvement, as now the experiment could be ‘performed’ for an audience.Until I started my own versions of these experiments, I hadn’t realised the implications of the different techniques: ‘flooding events’ versus ‘traced lines’; that the latter lends a more ‘abstract’ diagram-like appearance to the model, this version of the experiment is the one advanced by Alfred Wilks Drayson in the 1860s.[4]

W. H. Richards, 1884, fig.5

Yet, Burr’s original inky version retained the connection his students could make between contour lines and ‘real’ lines as seen in a landscape: receding tides deposit strata of seaweed or debris in a cove: ‘real’ contour lines are laid down before our eyes.[5] Had Burr ditched the stone for a plaster cast, retained the ink and emulated ‘flood’ rather than ‘ebb’ he could have ‘performed’ my version (that produces great results every time). Starting with inky water, subsequently adding only water, at 5min intervals, produces an attractive ‘hill’ ringed in tidelines of ever deeper hues suggestive of peering into the murky depths of a deep glacial lake.

The two versions from the 1800s – the diagrammatic traced line and the pictorial ink-bathed one – proffered two competing views for the depiction of relief throughout the 1800s. Arguments for methodical, repeatable, diagrammatic ‘abstract’ lines, were pitted against those favouring ‘natural’, pictorial and realistic looking lines on maps: contour lines were put to use by both camps.

Stones and plaster models were in use throughout the 1800s to teach cadets to draw (contours) in the classroom; ideas for [re]creating these drawing processes are currently abroad… watch this space.

[1] Paterson, Notes on Military Surveying… (1882) 4.

[2] G. D. Burr, A Treatise On Practical Surveying… (1839) 83–84.

[3] Basil Jackson, A course of military surveying… (1841) 68–69.

[4] Alfred Wilks Drayson, Practical Military Surveying and Sketching… (1861) 67.

[5] W. H. Richards, Text book of Military Topography… (1884) 18 & figure 5.

Childhood experiences in 2 & 3 dimensions

Two Dimensions

At primary school I remember being praised as the first child to paint the sky as a blue wash tracking all the way down the paper. The colour threaded through the branches of a tree where a squirrel sat. The convention among children was to depict the sky as a line, or thin blue band, at the top of the paper. I can’t remember what it was that prompted me to break with tradition.

At secondary school one time, the art teacher set as homework to ‘depict a landscape’. Most pupils copied from famous paintings of romantic or atmospheric rolling hills, evocatively lit with setting sun. Not for a moment did it cross my mind to do this, I set out for ‘cow hill’, a short walk from where I lived. Sitting at the bottom of the hill, the arc of it filled the paper, as was so often, there were no cows present. I painted the different hues of green I could see: the grasses, nettles and cow-parsley up the hill till it met the sky, which, as I recall was a clear blue. I was pleased with the result which only added to my distress when the teacher disparaged the effort: what I had done was ‘wrong’ and not ‘a landscape’ at all. Yet I was perhaps the only one who had sat outside and looked at what I could see. Perhaps I would have got a better mark had I sat at the top of the hill.

Aged around 13, there was a school trip to Wales. One day, the art teacher attached to the centre took us down to the beach to paint. All the children sat facing the sea, except me. I don’t know why I set myself up to paint the cliff behind us, but at some point, the teacher – without passing judgement on the quality of the work – said simply “you are painting the colours of the cliff”, in that moment I knew I wanted to be an artist when I grew up.

performance with flip-chart circa 1985

Three Dimensions

The art teacher at our comprehensive didn’t like me, my artworks weren’t ‘nice’. I preferred painting flattened surfaces where I could focus on colour rather than trying to convey in two-dimensions what was patently in three before me. Instinctively I preferred sculpture where three dimensions were rendered again as three.

In the first year we all did ‘technical drawing’, we sat in forward facing rows on high stools and were given small cuboid models in grey plastic to draw. Our instructions to measure the object and render its surfaces and outline in two-dimensions were clear and lessons had the absorbing quality of a jig-saw puzzle. Taught as an ancillary subject, ours was the first year offered the ‘choice’ which ancillaries to pursue. On offer were woodwork, metalwork, technical drawing, art, sewing and home economics. Previous to our year the classes had been split so the boys would continue in the former three, and girls the latter. It was exciting to be asked to choose and naturally I opted for technical drawing (and Lee Maxwell, who wished to work as a chef, picked cooking). However, when the lists went up, the sexes were split along the old lines. When Lee and I queried this we were brushed off, and neither of us had the wit to complain, we knew we weren’t important.

I can see now why I was so drawn to the problem-solving techniques offered us by the pared down shapes in technical drawing, and the vertical surfaces and colours of hillside and cliff. All my life I have grappled with the puzzle that is to render flat an object or scene onto paper. I have learned to draw perspective, distance, landscapes; but am not ‘gifted’ at it, and do not enjoy it in the way other artists patently do. It still confuses me, and I wonder if my preoccupation with contour lines, a simple – accurate ­– system for rendering three-dimensional terrain flat on paper, stems from this inability to do the flattening myself.

first year at art college, 1979

Using Bodies for Contouring

From the comfort of a desk, a curious vertical system of contouring was described by a number of military men in the 1800’s. Their suggested method was to draw contours using the average height of a male body  – mounted or otherwise – as a unit of measure. The verb ‘contouring’ implies movement around a hill; the Ordnance Survey would most often contour by walking ‘a line’ at one altitude whilst imagining (interpolating) lines above and below them. Traditionally the military had used the body as an instrument to measure distance, printed tables gave the ‘average pace’, of both person and horse, and were used with the aid of a timepiece. The use of walking, running – or cantering – seems reasonable to gauge distance in a hurry, or in ‘proximity’ of the enemy, but I find it hard to imagine body height being the handiest rule for gauging altitude whilst ascending a hill. In the field it would entail a halting, walk or ride, and the placing of ‘twigs’, ‘stones’ or ‘pieces of paper’ “at each point from which to measure the next to mark [where] the contours would be put.”[1] And although Captain James said it was ‘comparatively easy’:

Contours at vertical intervals equal to the distance from the foot to the eye of the sketcher are put in with comparative ease, and a plan contoured with such short intervals is preferable to a sketch with hachures.[2]

James was contradicted by others; the hypothetical ‘5 feet tall’ used for the sketcher, “did not bear sufficient relation to [individual] … height of eye”.[3] A speedy reconnoitre might require travelling alone and with little equipment, but this suggested method of using the body as instrument of contouring would have entailed travelling quite slowly – and visibly – up a hill, a highly risky endeavour in proximity of the enemy. I am most curious as to whether this was simply a fanciful notion dreamed up in the comfort of an armchair, or if it was ever actually ever used in ‘the field’.

This post stems from a talk I will be giving at the British Library as part of “Lines on a Map” 13-14 Dec 2019, it’s free to attend, please come! Register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lines-on-a-map-conference-tickets-81774960107

Images:

1. F. J. Hutchison and H. G. MacGregor, Military Sketching and Reconnaissance (1878), plate X (cropped). Image use with thanks to the Wohl Library of the Institute of Historical Research
2. Captain H. D. Hutchinson, Military Sketching made Easy, 1886 (1915, 7^th Ed), plate V.
3. W. H. Richards, Military Surveying and Field Sketching (1873), 90.

[1] W. H. Richards, Military Surveying and Field Sketching, the various methods of contouring, levelling, sketching without instruments, scale of shade, examples in military drawing etc. etc. etc., (London: Wm. H. Allen and Co., 1873), 91.

[2] James, Capt., [in] “III Military Sketching,” Papers on subjects (1866), 52.

[3] Webber, R. E., “On the Representation of Ground, especially in Military Reconnoissance,” Papers on subjects (1865), 139.

 

Body Doubles 2

“… an officer, who wishes to be employed in reconnoitrings, should studiously apply himself to figure drawing…” Charles Stanislas de Malortie, A Treatise of Topography, 1815

Banish the image of the ‘life-model’ partially draped in cloth, eyes lowered, pose demur; surrounded and ogled by ‘agitated’ teenage cadets. This is not the scene Malortie was proposing. Rather than bare flesh on display as substitute for the “various and sometimes so graceful curves which the courses of water and the undulations of soil describe”, his recommendation was for officers training to be surveyors and engineers to study ‘antique statues’: the stony equivalent of the scantily clad. This Friday afternoon as part of Rethinking Objects (see Events, or come if you can). I’m offering a lightning reconnoitre of Body Doubles: the body as substitute for landscape, flattened (as drawn object). Malortie eloquently espouses on the ‘striking analogy’ between map making and figure drawing: “Experience has shewn that this kind of drawing is the foundation of all others, and that a Draftman, [sic] who is properly acquainted with it, has no difficulties to apprehend in any other kind.”

From a sketch by W O Carlisle dated 1862, with thanks to Yolande Hodson and the Royal Artillery Barracks

Malortie drew on teaching methods in use in France in the early 1800’s, techniques that: “combined mathematical analysis and artistic style.” He was based with the Military Academy in Woolwich, where Charles Hutton taught. In his Treatise, he encouraged use of the body as: “an aid to interpreting the curves of the landscape”. Unfortunately, the only example I currently have of a sketch thus drawn by cadets is the one above (I owe a huge debt of thanks to Yolande Hodson for the loan of a slide of this). It’s not clear if the drawing is from a cast or from another sketch, I assume the latter as it is very prettily done. It is dated somewhat later than Malortie’s Treatise, though the original sculpture depicted was created in 1787. It is possible that the Academy held a replica of it throughout the 1800’s for the drawing practice of cadets. Malortie revels in his descriptions of the “rents, defiles, depressions, and anfractuosities” of mountains, offering “numberless resemblances” one to another, and thus implies the same of the sculpted body; that through its ‘curves’, ‘undulations’, ‘bendings’ and ‘sinuosities’, we grasp the relational nature of ‘hip to spine’, and can conceive of it as stand-in for ‘crest to col’. The body as ‘body double’ for terrain on maps, before the battle for contour lines was fought and won. As advocate of regular drawing practice for the officer cadets, I love the passion – nay ardour – of Malortie’s exhortations: “the habit of handling his pencil with ease and lightness will enable him to express quickly that multiplicity of windings, contours, and curves, indefinitely varied…” Indeed.

Horizontal and Vertical Mountains

The research is taking me all over the place, quite literally: Thursday week presenting a talk for the International Conference on the History of Cartography in Amsterdam, then Tokyo the following day for the International Cartographic Conference (see Events for two-places-at-once explanation).

As preparation for the above, a recap is handy: first there were isobaths – submarine contours – possibly ‘invented’ by Bruins – or Ancelin – either way, definitely in the Netherlands where the need to understand qualities of water drove innovation. And they fitted so well: swirling, fluid, ‘horizontal’ lines that looked so similar to conventional depictions of water-bodies; it is impossible to mistake ‘lake’ with ‘land’ on these maps. Here (see below) ‘pictorial’ water-lining and ‘scientific’ isobaths work together hand in hand.

Map by Cruquius, Image use courtesy of Leiden University

The question was, could horizontal lines ‘climb out of water’ and encircle mountain-sides? There was no doubting the value of contour lines ‘scientifically’, the question was one of perception; could we ‘read’ them? In the 1770’s Hutton used them to show altitude, though we don’t have his map. The French were toying with the idea (more on them another time). But at issue is a mismatch: when mountains have always been represented with vertical lines ^^^ (including hachures), how can watery, fluid, horizontal lines be readily perceived as rugged shoulders and lofty peaks?

Image use with permission of The National Archives (TNA)

An early – tentative – foray was made by Robert Dawson. A fabulous draftsman, rather than scientist (or writer; he calls his watercolours “essays” and one can track his thinking through his drawings). In 1803, required to teach cadets drawing skills, he planned a ‘course of instruction’ for the Ordnance Survey. As this entailed working in ‘the classroom’, he advised: “Stones may be taken as Models of Hills, their Surfaces being frequently varied by accidental frictions, to a direct similitude of Features, with those, which Hills display.” (See? Bit clumsy with words.)

Image use with permission of The National Archives (TNA)

Tucked inside his hand-written ‘instructions’ are these beautiful little drawings of stones, some employing traditional vertical lines, in others he also experiments with a pictorial use of horizontal lines. These are not ‘scientific’ contour lines displaying accurate elevation, but you ‘see’ him figuring out whether mountains could be drawn ‘horizontally’. Forty years later he was still not convinced (more on that another time, or come to Amsterdam and hear: “A line drawn: the tortuous progress of contours onto British Maps”).

A quarter of bruised Aleppo galls

It has been a week of highs and lows: high, having an article published (see below); low, thinking I am reading about Ordnance Survey printing processes circa 1875, only to realise I am witness to Colonialism in action. Look at the materials listed here: “a week solution of powder of Tripoli…”, “… varnished on the reverse side with Japan black”, “The plates are of the best Silesian zinc”, “… and smoothed with a piece of steatite, known in the trade as snakestone or Water of Ayr stone.” “A mixture of Paris black, Castile soap, white wax, tallow or sweet oil, and shellac …”, “Copper-plate printers’ ink consists of Frankfurt black and a little indigo or Prussian blue …”, “… three ounces of Burgundy pitch …”, “… three quarts of moderately thick gum Arabic water …”, “… finely powdered bitumen of Judea.” “… a quarter of bruised Aleppo galls in a quart of water …”. Each material named by provenance (I am beginning to interrogate text like a geographer). It was the mention of ‘Aleppo’ that had me tracking back for the other products named by the places where we meddled in people’s lives, took things from them and called it ‘trade’; sending me to the doors of despair.For me contour lines on a map represent freedom of traverse, I forget that the intention of the Ordnance Survey then was not to enable artists to go wandering in the landscape, but rather for quantifying or qualifying land for defence and attack or ownership, taxes, railways, trade: generally, the transfer of money and belongings to those who already have enough. Yet now targeted OS adverts on Facebook exhort me to eschew the gym and subscribe to their products to get into the hills; how times have changed. You follow this blog because it’s about contour lines, no? So, here’s my own ‘advert’; you could do a lot worse than give this article – free to download, and written with the wonderful Emeritus Professor Robin Johnson – a peruse over breakfast tomorrow.

Quotes and images from: Lieut.-General Sir Henry James, Account of the methods and processes adopted for the production of the maps of the Ordnance Survey of the United Kingdom..., (London: Longman & Co, 1875), 175-212.