Edward Stanford's remarkably detailed 6 inch to the mile Library Map of London & Its Suburbs was first published in 1862, the year of the International Exhibition, where Stanford was awarded a medal by the the jury for the beauty and accuracy of his maps. These reproductions are examples of that first edition. It was engraved on 24 steel plates, with hand applied watercolour, and published as individual sheets in a
portfolio with an overview index map.
20th century world maps traditionally use the 16th century Mercator projection, which treats the world as a cylinder, however there is no easy way to flatten a sphere and the problem with this technique is that it distorts the shapes of the countries, especially near the poles. The Peters projection, designed in 1974 by historian and cartographer Dr Arno Peters portrays the countries in their correct size proportional to one another.
The Robinson projection is a world map using a pseudo cylindrical projection devised in 1963 by American teacher Arthur Robinson who used curved meridians and shorter parallels to address the problem of polar distortion. These stylish contemporary maps are printed on a silk finish paper with a glossy varnish applied to the land masses.
