Name: Joshua Archer
Dates: (flourished) 1841-1865
Type of maps: Usually small (typically 7"x 9" or similar) maps, printed from engraved steel plates on machine-made paper. Often uncoloured or with crude outline colouring.
Joshua Archer’s early work is often overlooked as he is perhaps best recognised for work published in in the Curiosities of Great Britain by Thomas Dugdale in around 1846.The fine, steel engraved maps characterised the more austere, functional approach that was becoming increasingly typical of Victorian cartographers, who generally rejected, with the notable exception of Thomas Moule and perhaps Archibald Fullerton, the more decorative styles of earlier mapmakers such as the likes of John Speed, Emanuel Bowen Thomas Kichin.
Perhaps this veer away from the decorative suggests the idea that Archer’s maps were designed to be used, as opposed to merely studied. Their content includes communications: canals, railways and coach routes. Market towns, various religious buildings including priories, abbeys and churches were also indicated, as were ancient divisions within the counties, marked as ‘hundreds’ for most areas, bar some northern counties of England). Archer’s plates were later reissued, published together with some of some Cole & Roper plates in England & Wales delineated. The maps often featured quite crude outline colouring, well in keeping with the somewhat anti-aesthetic, pro-scientific tone of the time.
Overtly pretty they may not be, but the wealth of information included on these delightful small maps cannot be undervalued. It is fair to say that they are collected today, not for their looks, but as a record of the both the cartographic and socio-political developments of the mid 19th century.
Perhaps this veer away from the decorative suggests the idea that Archer’s maps were designed to be used, as opposed to merely studied. Their content includes communications: canals, railways and coach routes. Market towns, various religious buildings including priories, abbeys and churches were also indicated, as were ancient divisions within the counties, marked as ‘hundreds’ for most areas, bar some northern counties of England). Archer’s plates were later reissued, published together with some of some Cole & Roper plates in England & Wales delineated. The maps often featured quite crude outline colouring, well in keeping with the somewhat anti-aesthetic, pro-scientific tone of the time.
Overtly pretty they may not be, but the wealth of information included on these delightful small maps cannot be undervalued. It is fair to say that they are collected today, not for their looks, but as a record of the both the cartographic and socio-political developments of the mid 19th century.
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