Mercator Map of Scotland, 1628

The story of this map

Gerard Mercator, the Flemish mapmaker whose projection still shapes how we picture the world, drew Scotland for his great atlas at the end of the sixteenth century. After his death the plates passed to the Hondius family of Amsterdam, who kept printing them for decades. This print comes from a hand-coloured copy issued by Henricus Hondius around 1628, one of the later printings of Mercator’s Scotia Regnum.

The map has a wonderful ragged energy. Scotland’s west coast is a lacework of sea lochs and islands, the Hebrides strung out into the Atlantic, Orkney sitting at the top like a crown. Rivers wriggle inland, the Latin and old Scots place names are lettered in a neat italic hand, and the colourist has picked out the regions in soft greens, yellows and pinks against a warm paper tone.

There is real history here too. This is Scotland a generation after James VI went south to become James I of England, still drawn as a kingdom in its own right, its regions and towns spelled as Dutch engravers understood them.

It belongs to our Antique Maps of Europe collection and makes a handsome pair with our Edgar plan of Edinburgh or the Hondius map of Great Britain and Ireland. We picture it in a black frame over a fireplace, or in oak in a study. Each print is made to order on archival matte paper and framed in the country of delivery.

Before and after

Left: the archive scan exactly as published. Right: the file that goes to the printer.

Archive scanRestored

Restoration notes

Restoration plan: crop scan margins, balance colour cast and levels while keeping the paper tone, remove library stamps and scanner artefacts if present, gentle sharpening. No repainting of original content.

Every print carries its archive credit on the packing slip. Paper tone and small imperfections of the original are kept on purpose; nothing is redrawn.