151 restored maps
Framed vintage maps, by collection
Every map here comes from a public archive that states it is free to reuse, is restored at full resolution, and is printed to order on archival matte paper — framed or unframed, in the sizes its scan can carry.
Antique World Maps
The great Dutch and Flemish world maps of the 16th and 17th centuries — Blaeu's double hemispheres, Ortelius' Typus Orbis Terrarum, the Hondius plate, Cellarius' celestial charts and Lafreri's sea-monster Carta Marina — restored from the archives' own scans and printed at sizes that show the cartouches and the allegorical borders properly.
Antique Maps of US States
From the first maps printed of the new United States to the county maps of the 1800s: California drawn as an island in 1650, Stephen F.
Antique Map Prints of American Cities
City plans and bird's-eye views from the Library of Congress: the 1776 Ratzer plan of Manhattan, the 1865 Viele water map, Currier & Ives' panoramas of New York, Chicago and New Orleans, Charleston in 1790 and 1872, Philadelphia in 1752, San Francisco in 1868, Seattle in 1891.
Framed Nautical Charts & Maps
The US Coast Survey drew these charts by hand in the 1850s–1890s: soundings in fathoms, lighthouses, sailing directions and the coast as sailors then knew it.
Antique Maps of Europe
Ortelius' Italy, Mercator's Scotland, Jefferys' Ireland, the 1739 Turgot plan of Paris, John Rocque's 1746 London and Jacopo de' Barbari's 1500 woodcut view of Venice — the maps people ask for by name, from the Library of Congress, the Leventhal Map Center and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Framed Topographic Maps
Historical USGS quadrangles — Yosemite 1909, the Grand Canyon's Bright Angel sheet of 1903, Bar Harbor and Acadia in 1904, Harlem in 1897, Provincetown in 1889, Yellowstone and the Great Smoky Mountains — with their contour lines, hand-lettered peaks and the brown-and-blue palette that makes a framed topographic map read as art.
Historic Charts & Themed Maps
Maps that are also stories: Colton's railroad map of the United States in the boom years, the Geological Survey's panoramic view of Yellowstone, Emma Willard's 1849 chart of time, and Harold Fisk's 1944 Mississippi meander-belt map — the one geologists and designers both love.
Vintage Travel & National Park Posters
Between 1936 and 1939 the Works Progress Administration silkscreened a small run of posters for the National Park Service and the United States Travel Bureau — Zion, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Lassen, Fort Marion, the See America series and the two wildlife sheets.
Antique Maps of Asia
The maps Europe, Manila and Edo made of the eastern half of the world: Murillo Velarde's 1734 chart of the Philippines with its engraved panels of island life, Nagakubo Sekisui's hand-coloured woodblock map of Japan, de Wit's late-baroque Tartary, China and Japan, the small Clüver China of 1697 and the US Navy's chart of the Japan coast drawn in the wake of Perry.
Japanese Woodblock Prints
Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo and Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, Utamaro's portraits and Yoshida's glittering sea — restored from the Library of Congress's high-resolution scans of original impressions in its Japanese prints collection, not from a redrawn file.
Patent Prints
The drawing sheets of ten famous American patents — the Wright brothers' flying machine, Edison's lamp, Bell's telephone, Tesla's induction motor, the Kodak, the Coca-Cola bottle, Monopoly, the LEGO brick, the Stratocaster and the Rubik's Cube — printed from the official grants published by the US Patent and Trademark Office.
