Period map questions

[Hominy]

Re: Period map questions

Chris,

To follow up on Bill's comments, a Topographical Engineer is not an easy impression. Do you have a background in cartography, civil engineering or some other related field to give you some background?

The US Engineers were the tops of their classes at West Point so they weren't a bunch of slackers. The number of topics they were expert at is simply mind-boggling.

Last, doesn't map-making require some sort of surveying equipment? I'm not sure an accurate map of anything could be made simply by "eyeballing" it.

I'm not trying to squelch your enthusiasm rather inject some things you might not have considered into the discussion.

I may be mistaken, but I believe that Jed Hotchkiss was a self-taught cartographer.

Bill Lawson

[dusty27]

Re: Period map questions

Bill, looks like you are right.

Jedediah Hotchkiss was born on November 28, 1828, to Stiles and Lydia(Beecher) Hotchkiss in , to Stiles and , graduating from the Windsor Academy. He was teaching school in Lykens Valley, PA, by his 18th year of age. After he turned 19, he set out on a venture to explore new places and faces. Upon reaching Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains and looking out and down upon the Mossy Creek Academy in Augusta County.

In exploring his adopted home, he began the hobby of map making and developed the skill that would make him invaluable to the Confederate Army.

"A transplanted New Yorker, Jedediah Hotchkiss became the most famous of Confederate topographers. In 1861 he gave up teaching and offered his services as a map maker to General Garnett in western Virginia. After serving at Rich Mountain and mapping out General Lee's planned campaign in the mountains, he fell ill with typhoid fever. In March 1862 he joined Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley as a captain and chief topographical engineer of the Valley District. Often personally directing troop movements he took part in the actions of the Valley Campaign and at Cedar Mountain, Fredericksburg. At Jackson was able to launch his surprise flank attack on the Union 11th Corps. After the death of his chief he served the next two commanders of the corps, Generals Ewell and Early, but was frequently assigned to work for Lee's headquarters. In this dual role he served at and in the Mine Run and Wilderness campaigns."


From http://www.nycivilwar.us/hotchkiss.html

A sample of his work is attached

[RockCityGuard]

Re: Period map questions

I once had a business selling antique books, maps, documents, etc. dating as far back as the 17th Century. I sold many maps of the period and found that almost all of them are hand water colored if they are colored at all. There are some penciled colored maps but printed color maps of the period are almost non-existent. They did however print black and white maps and then color them doing a darn fine job. There were some engraving methods with color used such as Aquatint as has been mentioned, but it certainly was not common. Color Lithography was patented in the 1840’s but started in Europe and didn’t become wide-spread until the 1870’s in the United States. The advice of rag paper is certainly the way to go. Many scrapbook stores sell fine linen and cotton rag without water marks. One key point with rag paper is that it doesn’t smear when wet and is often used by spelunkers (cavers) and others who survey damp locations. Some rag paper does contain acid so be sure to look for pH neutral or acid free paper.



Aquatint:
“Aquatint engraving is a fascinating art form, but its name is doubly misleading. It suggests a water colour painting. Yet it is in fact, a monochrome process and it consists of etching rather an engraving. Acid, aquafortis, not hard tools, creates hollows in the metal plate. It is only less texturally rich than the mezzotint and it suggests a far greater extent a freedom of tone akin to the limpid brushwork of water colour.
Aquatint is a complicated process and involves dissolving resin in spirits of wine and pouring the liquid over a highly polished copper plate. The plate is warmed and the spirit evaporates, leaving a granulated surface on the plate, known as the ground. Usually the outline of the subject is etched onto the plate, before ground is applied and the etched lines filled with ink. Sometime the subject was traced or drawn onto the plate.
When it is ready the plate is exposed to acid which bites around the resin granules. As each required tone is reached, the plate is withdrawn and the area of tone covered with a stepping-out varnish. This continues until the darkest tones are obtained, possibly eight or twelve 'bites' being required.
Aquatints could be printed uncoloured or in one or two coloured inks, olive, brown, green or red were used in England. Coloured aquatints were finished by hand and the best examples are difficult to distinguish from water colour. The main disadvantage of the coloured aquatint was the cost of production, long print runs were impractical and it almost ceased to be used in England by the mid-nineteenth century.
In an aquatint one is aware of a surface grain of varying depth and opacity covering almost every part of the print. This may be coarse or fine but is usually consistent texture. It is never a smooth blur but appears as lighter and darker areas of speckled powdery tone rather than the engraver's multitudinous individual lines. A magnifying glass makes this clear.
In contrast to the mezzotint, the aquatint was worked from light tones into ever increasing darkness. The shadows never acquired the intense velvet texture of the mezzotint but the light has a limpid brilliance.” (http://www.collectorsprints.com/glossary/aquatint.asp)

Lithograph:
“Lithography is the art of writing and drawing on stone - depends on the natural antipathy which grease and water have for each other. Basically the process is simple although it is capable of a large number of developments and refinements. The stone used is limestone, originally from Bavaria but later from Bath in England.
The surface of the stone is smoothed, washed and dried, a drawing in lithographic chalk or ink is made directly onto the stone. Both the chalk and the ink are greasy. The stone is washed all over and the printing ink is applied with a roller. This ink affixes to the greased image but is repelled by the remainder of the wet stone. The image can then be taken off on a sheet of damp paper. The image can also be transferred to the prepared stone by means of transfer paper.
In 1840 the Lithotint process was patented; in this a second stone, known as a tint stone, was used so that effect of a wash drawing could be obtained, the tint was usually buff or grey. Intermediate tints could be obtained by scraping away. By using several stones, fully coloured impressions were obtainable.
Thomas Shotter Boys, Gericault and Delacroix all adapted this medium in its early days.” (http://www.collectorsprints.com/glossary/lithograph.asp)

[Vuhginyuh]

Re: Period map questions

Lithography - Lythography (stone printing) - Originally associated with stone surface printing is a technique using a planographic process in which prints are pulled on a special press from a flat metal or stone surface that has been chemically sensitized so that ink sticks only to the design areas, and is repelled by the non-image areas. Multiple plates for multple colors can be employed. Lithography originated 1798 in Solnhofen, Germany and is widely attributed by Alois Senefelder, who standardized the process. The early history of fine art lithography is dominated by great French artists such as Daumier and Delacroix, and later by Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Braque and Miro. Some artists such as Renoir even used photographic images to capture their subject. Fine art studios favored the use of limestone while commercial printers used a harder edged, more durable material such as steel. Stone plates were used for small editions or single works while metal was capable of producing thousands before being freshened.This process was the first used for mass commercial volumes.


Aquatint* - Printing Technique capable of producing unlimited tonal gradations to re-create the broad flat tints of ink wash or watercolor drawings by etching microscopic crackles and pits into the image using acid and masked surfaces on a master plate, typically made of copper and zinc. Commercially, this process was also one of the first used in creating large issue color volumes of books, maps at fine art. The majority of Spanish artists Goya’s (1746-1828) graphic works were done using this technique.

*The same basic process is also used to etch designs in military sword blades since the 1770's. Smaller details were then engraved or etched in.

[tomarch]

Re: Period map questions

While being mounted is mentioned frequently,I belive it's also acceptable to go on foot.While preparing to act as a Topo Eng'r at TAG last year, I purchased two different original texts on Military Surveying, and did a fair amount of practicing in my area. I found I could sketch a fair topo map covering 60+ acres of broken woods and rolling terrain in about 1 hr. Of course to properly turn it into a map for use by Staff would require a lot of afterhours drafting in the field.

BTW if you read in Maps and Mapmakers, you will see that Capt. Wm. Merrill,Chief Topo. Eng'r. Dept. of the Cumberland ordered engineers under his command to use colored pencil (see pg.#51).

If you can get buddy-buddy with someone in your local County Engineer or Public Works Dept., you may just find yourself a supply of drafting linen! I got myself a few yards of it out here in Santa Barbara!

The main problem I have found in doing this as an impression is that most the people who are the recipients of my maps need to be taught map reading and orientation! :wink_smil